11,746 The Communication Initiative, Culture, Media, Communication, Theory, Development

Greetings Octavio

Perhaps too often in Development we ignore theory. The very sad death of Stuart Hall reminds us of the vital importance of theory for all of our work. His theoretical and research insights on themes of media and culture have been very influential informing the work that so many people undertake.

The CI asked Thomas Tufte, Professor in Communication for Development at Roskilde University, Denmark and the Ørecomm’ research centre on communication and glocal change for some reflections on the importance of Hall for our work. He engaged his colleague Anders Høg Hansen. An extract from their piece follows with a link to the full blog. Please do comment with your own analysis and critique. And please do send us blogs on your favourite theorists.

Goodbye to a rigorous and socially relevant public intellectual

«The concern with trying to merge a rigorous analysis of contemporary cultural and media phenomena with a study of its social and political relevance, values and change potentials, were crucial in cultural studies, especially in its early decades. It is this concern Hall’s cultural studies approach has shared with Communication for Development. The notion of change processes in Communication for Development have increasingly moved from being considered vertical processes of expert-driven change to becoming not only culture sensitive but culturally-centred approaches where the social and cultural practices of everyday life increasingly have become fundamental, both in the understanding of change as well as in the perception of possibilities and limitations of media and communication in social change processes»

«A seminal text read for decades by many students across the social sciences was Stuart Hall’s ‘Encoding/Decoding’ (1973/1980). This text opened our eyes to the polysemy (or multiplicity) of sense-making processes, it gave us insight into how difficult it is to control a strategic communication process, and, one might say, it provided a strong argument for why communication never can be considered a magic bullet. For the field of Communication for Development, ‘Encoding/Decoding’ made it evident how extremely important in-depth formative and summative research is if we are to really grasp the role of communication in people’s lives. It made cultural studies socially relevant.»

THE FULL TEXT OF THIS BLOG IS AVAILABLE AT THIS LINK

Please do comment with your own analysis and critique. And please do send us blogs on your favourite theorists.

Thanks

Warren
Warren Feek
Executive Director
The Communication Initiative
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