development communication lecture 2 - bretton woods and development communication ppt (1)

BRETTON WOODS AND DEVELOPMENT

COMMUNICATION

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMM

•The creation of the Bretton Woods system

(within the period of turmoil)

– After World War II, the Bretton Woods system was established.

– In fact, the agreement to create a new international monetary system was negotiated among the allied powers even before the end of WW2, leading to the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944.


•Bretton Woods is the name of a small tourist spot in the mountains of New Hampshire, USA.

•There, the delegates gathered to design a new global economic system.

•Their most important goal was to prevent each country from pursuing selfish policies, such as competitive devaluation of currency (to stimulate exports so that exports are less expensive but limit imports), protectionism and forming trade blocks, which damaged the world economy in the 1930s.


• The British delegation was headed by John M. Keynes, the famous economist, while Harry D. White of the US Treasury Department represented the American side.

• The contents of the new system were negotiated essentially by these two countries.


• As a dominant military and economic power, the US took the leadership away from Britain, which was war torn and losing international influence.

• The Keynes proposal was rejected and the US idea became the foundation of the newly created International Monetary Fund (IMF).


• Each country would contribute a certain amount ("quota") to this fund, and member countries with BOP difficulties would borrow (or "purchase" hard currencies) from this fund.

• This meant that only deficit countries would bear the responsibility for correcting the imbalance. (The UK was expected to be a deficit country after the war, while the US was expected to be a surplus country.)


• The Bretton Woods Agreement also established the World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development).

• The World Bank's initial purpose was to assist the recovery of war-torn Europe and Japan.


• But in reality, Japan's recovery was assisted by US bilateral aid and Europe's recovery was promoted by the 1948 Marshall Plan (after WWII), a massive US aid program in order to prevent the spread of Soviet Communism.

• The World Bank subsequently became an organization to assist developing countries.

• The World Bank was at the center of the Modernization paradigm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinism


• The IMF and the World Bank were called the Bretton Woods sister organizations.

• One more organization (International Trade Organization) was also planned but not created at that time.


• Instead, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a non-organizational entity, played the role of promoting free trade for four decades.

• GATT became institutionalized as WTO in 1995. So we now have three sisters.


• The Emergence of DevComm Paradigms Historical Context– When the United States became a superpower after

World War II, American social scientists were called upon to study the problems of “Third World”development.

– This started the modernization school, which dominated the field of development in the 1950s and Rogers rightly called “dominant paradigm” of development as it exercised a dominant influence in the field of development.

• This model emphasizes productivity, economic growth, industrialization, urbanization, centralized planning and endogenous factors of development, and development was measured by gross national product (GNP).

• Daniel Lerner and Wilbur Schramm are among the influential advocates who made significant contributions in identifying the role of communication for technological development.

• Heavily influenced by the evolutionary theory, American social scientists conceptualized modernization as a phased, irreversible, progressive, lengthy process that moves in the direction of the American model.

• Strongly influenced by Parson’s functionalist theory, they looked upon modernity as incompatible with tradition.

• Subsequently the American social scientists proposed that Third World countries should copy American values, rely on US loans and aid, and transform their traditional institutions.


-The modernization paradigm, dominant in academic circles from around 1945 to 1965, supported the transferring of technology andthe socio-political culture of the developed societies to the ‘traditional’ societies.


• Development was defined as economic growth.

• The central idea in the modernization perspective is the idea of evolution, which implies that development is conceived as

firstly, directional and cumulative, secondly, predetermined and irreversible, thirdly, progressive, and fourthly, immanent with reference to the nation state. The developed western societies or modern societies seem to be the ultimate goals which the less developed societies strive to reach.


• All societies would, passing through similar stages, evolve to a common point: the modern society.

• In order to be a modern society, the attitudes of ‘backward’ people—their traditionalism,

bad taste, superstition, fatalism, etc.—which are obstacles and barriers in the traditional societies have to be removed.


• The differences among nations are explained in terms of the degree of development rather than the fundamental nature of each.

• Hence, the central problem of development was thought to revolve around the question of ‘bridging the gap’ and ‘catching up’ by means of imitation processes between traditional and modern sectors, between retarded and advanced or between ‘barbarian’ and civilized sectors.


• Daniel Lerner and Wilbur Schramm (1964) supported the dominant paradigm and advocated automation and technology for development and change.

• They made significant contributions in identifying the role of communication for technological development.

• The development community argued that the case of underdevelopment in the developing countries was not due to external causes but due to internal causes present within the nation and the individual as well as within the social structure.


• Lerner and Schramm stressed that the individual was to be blamed to the extent that he was resistant to change and modernization, whereas Rogers, Bordenave and Beltran (1976) argued that the social structural constraints like government bureaucracy, land tenure system, caste, exploitative linkages (e.g. middlemen), etc. were to be blamed.


• Lerner, Schramm and Rogers emphasized role of mass media for development and social, political change.

• Lerner identified four indices of development: industrialization, literacy, media exposure and political participation.

• People have to be mobile, empathetic (take charge), and participatory for development.


• Lerner (1958) suggested that media exposure, political participation and developing empathy are necessary for development.

• Modern society is a participant society and it works by consensus.


• Thus, in the dominant paradigm the communication flow was one way which was top-down vertical communication from the authorities to the people, the mass media channels were used to mobilize the people for development and the audience was assigned a passive role for acceptance of social change.


• The failure of the Modernization programs in Latin America in the 1960s led to the need for an overhaul of strategies/paradigms.

• This led to the emergence of a neo-Marxist dependency school.

• These recent modifications of the modernization school have led to a new direction of research referred as the “new modernization studies” or “dependency school”.


• The dependency paradigm played an important role in the movement for a New World Information and Communication Order from the late 1960s to the early 1980s.

At that time, the new states in Africa, Asia and the success of socialist and popular movements in Cuba, China, Chile and other countries provided the goals for political, economic and cultural self-determination within the international community of nations.


• These new nations shared the ideas of being independent from the superpowers and moved to form the Non-Aligned Nations.

• The Non-Aligned Movement defined development as political struggle (i.e. against former colonialists; capitalism)

• This dependency school was highly critical of modernization school, frequently attacking it as a rationalization of imperialism.

• The dependency school criticized the idea as proposed by the modernization school that the linkages with Western and Third World countries as a set of externally imposed, exploitative, dependent, economic relationship incompatible with development.

• Thus this school advocated that Third World countries should sever their linkages with western countries in order to promote an autonomous, independent path of development.

• This is because that the latest theme of modernization school is that tradition can play a beneficial role in development and Third World countries can pursue their own paths of development.


• According to the dependency theory, the most important hindrances to development are not the shortage of capital or management, as the modernization theorists contend, but must be sought in the present international system.

• The obstacles are thus not internal but external.


• This also means that development in the Centre (the US) determines and maintains the underdevelopment in the Periphery (developing nations).

.The two poles are structurally connected to each

other.• To remove these external obstacles, they argue, each

peripheral country should dissociate itself from the world market and opt for a self-reliant development strategy. (c.f. Malaysia dissociated itself from the US during Dr. M’s premiership but forged ties with Japan)


• To make this happen, most scholars advocated that a more or less revolutionary political transformation will be necessary. (Dr. M?)

• Therefore, the dependency paradigm in general is characterized by a global approach, an emphasis on external factors and regional contradictions, a polarization between development and underdevelopment, and a primarily economically oriented analytical method.


• Many non-aligned countries were simply too weak economically, and too indebted, to operate autonomously.

• Dependency addressed the causes of underdevelopment, but did not provide ways of addressing that underdevelopment.


• The development philosophy of the dependency model is that foreign penetration, technology and information have created underdevelopment rather than being a force for development.

• The economic and cultural dependency on developed countries shapes the social and economic structures of many developing countries.


• Dependency theorists, T. Dos Santos (1970), Qui Jano, Cardoso and Chilcote etc., hypothesized that contemporary underdevelopment was created by the same process of expansion of capitalism by which developed countries progressed.


• It is argued that the diffusion of the life-style of the developed country through mass media aggravates social inequality, because the communication and diffusion of the modernized life-style is only among elites.

• But the consumerism created by the mass media frustrates the poor as it does not fit in with their economic and social reality.


• The communication strategies suggested are: – to educate the people about the vicious nature

and the stifling dependency relationships, – to mobilize national and regional support

communication channels.• They argue that mass media system in these

countries is caught in the dependency relationships and at times actively supports them.


• Therefore, communication strategies should serve the educational and mobilizing functions.

• Mass media could be employed purposefully once structural transformation of society takes place (Louis Beltran and P.Allien,1976)

• However, when the dependency school came under attack in the early 1970s, its researchers modified their basic assumptions as follows: – “dependency is not just an economic but also a

sociopolitical process; – dependency is not just an external relationship but

also a historically specific internal relationship; and – development can occur side by side with

dependency.”


The New Paradigm of Development • The new Paradigm emerged in the 1970s. • It is a reaction to all development models in the

past and it tries to assimilate the various emphasis of all the other models.

• Development theorists and practitioners have incorporated many dimensions in the development model which were never emphasized earlier.


• The unifying dimension of this alternative model is participation in development.

• This approach attempts to integrate strategically a host of ideas related to development that have emerged in the past such as popular participation, grass roots development, integrated rural development, use of appropriate technology, fulfilment of basic needs, productive use of local resources, maintenance of ecological balances, development problems to be defined by the people themselves and culture as a mediating force in development.


• There is an explicit emphasis on the idea of self-reliance, self-development and redistribution of resources between social groups, urban and rural areas, regions and sexes.

• Thus a new direction of dependency started as the “new dependency studies”.

• The coexistence of contrasting perspectives in the field of development made the 1970s a time of intellectual fertility.

• By the mid 1970s, the ideological battle between the modernization school and the dependency school began to subside.

• The world-system perspective, thus emerged, and offered a new orientation to the interpretation of major events in the 1970s, such as East Asian industrialization, the crisis of the socialist states, and the decline of the capitalist world-economy (i.e. free market, neo-liberalism practices).

• Influenced first by the dependency school and then by the French Annales school, world-system researchers emphasized the need to examine the totality.

• The unit of analysis thus should be the world-economy, a historical system composed of three strata: “the core, the semiperiphery, and the periphery”.

• The world-system school contended that by the late twentieth century, the capitalist world economy would reach a transitional stage at which real choices might be made to change the path of human history.


• The role of communication which was essentially to inform and influence people was being revised and proposed as a process of social interaction through the balanced exchange of information which shall lead to change.

• The participatory dimension of the model emerged, from the failure of the whole development philosophy of the Dominant Paradigm.


• The communication needs as identified by UNESCO (1978) in the “New Paradigm” are open dialogue which reflects diversified views and experiences. Secondly, multi directional communication flow is necessary.

• This multi directional flow calls for top down as well as horizontal communication and bottom-up communication.


• The horizontal communication is across society horizontally – from person to person, village to village and rural to urban.

• The bottom-top is from people to government and top-down the other way around.

• UNESCO further contends that for participatory rural communication, media should be made available in rural areas.

• There should be linkage between development initiatives and communication channels.


• The communication strategy urged in this paradigm used mainly interpersonal channels with support from mass media-both cosmopolitan and indigenous media.

• The functions of communication were not only to disseminate information but also educate them for development by persuasion through mass media.

• Interpersonal channels were utilized for communicating feedback on development activities.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMMApproaches to Development Communication• There are varied approaches to handle development

communication which are not exclusive to each other. • The main approaches are:– 1. Diffusion/extension approach– 2. Mass Media approach– 3. Development support communication approach– 4. Instructional approach– 5. Integrated approach– 6. Localized approach– 7. Planned strategy


• Diffusion/ extension Approach to Development Communication: – The main focus of this approach is the adoption of

technological and social innovations through diffusion of new ideas, services and products.

– Diffusion of both material and social innovations is necessary for development.

– Material innovations refer to economic and technological innovations and social innovations pertain to social needs and structure.


• The process of diffusion starts with the need assessment of the community and the need fulfilment of community in a better way through innovations.

• The individual and community decisions for acceptance and rejection of innovations depend primarily on the needs of the adopters.

• What is communicated about the innovations and how it is communicated are very important.


• The resultant consequences of diffusion can be direct/indirect, latent (existing)/manifest (develop) and functional/dysfunctional.

• The early models of diffusion focused only on material growth.

• But it was soon realized that social growth along with material growth was necessary for diffusion of products, ideas and services.

• Therefore, diffusion decisions have to handle the economic, technological and social constraints.


• Mass Media in Development Communication: – A well-defined and developed mass media and

interpersonal communication infrastructure is necessary for development communication.

– It is necessary that these infrastructures should be accessible to the people, both physically and socially.

– The content of the messages should be balanced. – The content should be both rural and urban oriented

and addressed to masses in both sectors. – The messages should be need-based and they should

appeal to the audience.


• Development support communication: – Communication is used for persuasion,

transmission of knowledge and information, for personal expression, and as a vital instrument for social and political change associated with sectoral development.

– It is established that development support communication system will continuously emphasize the appropriate motivation for the ongoing support to sectoral development programmes.


• Communication strives not only to inform and educate but also to motivate people and secure public participation in the growth and change process.

• A widespread understanding of development plans is an essential stage in the public cooperation for national development.

• Methods of communication must give people messages in simple language for understanding.


• The development plans must be carried in every home in the language and symbols of the people and expressed in terms of their common needs and problems.

• If obstacles are encountered and things go wrong somewhere people must be informed and acquainted with the steps taken to set things right.

• The integrated approach to development communication– emphasizes the need to avoid duplication and

waste in development efforts. – The balance in the spread of information facilities

must be maintained both for rural and urban, backward and prosperous areas.

• Institutional approach focuses on education for development. – The emphasis is on literacy-universal education,

adult education, formal and non-formal education. – There is emphasis on need-based training and

development – oriented programmes conducive to development.


• Planned Strategy for Development Communication: – Multi-channel approach for development

communication would ensure wider reach with lasting effect.

– The success of development communication depends on team approach, i.e. the coordination between the communication agencies (extension workers, radio, TV, Press, etc.) and development agencies.


• The team should consist of communicators, experts, specialists and researchers.

• Consultation, collaboration and coordination between development agencies and communication media agencies would facilitate the effectiveness of the development communication strategy.


• Community-based communication system may be evolved to ensure greater participation of local people in planning and production of communication material which is community-based.

• The development process, almost globally, has shown a lack of sensitivity to the environment.

• This has had lethal effects. • History bears testimony to the fact that some

civilizations have died because of their reckless exploitation of the environment.

• An important element that is missing from most planning development is sustainability.

• Most development countries are consciously or unconsciously trying to copy the West without any awareness of their resources and limits.

• While relative self-reliance is the ideal, global interdependence cannot be ignored.

• The developed countries have depended, and still depend, on the developing countries for many important resources that have made their development possible and contribute to its sustainability.

• This interdependence is not restricted only to raw and semi-processed materials; the West has drawn heavily also on the brain power and trained competence of the Third World.

• Silicon Valley/NASA rely on foreign expertise.

• Pollution problems and overpopulation problems on available resources helped create doubts whether unending growth was possible or desirable, whether high technology was the most appropriate engine for development.

• There was a growing loss of faith in the “trickle-down” theory of distributive development benefits.

• People were getting “development weary” from the slow rate of economic development.

• The world oil crisis demonstrated that developing countries could make their own rules in the international game and produced some suddenly rich developing nations.

• This was a lesson to other developing countries of Latin America, Asia and Africa – that the causes of underdevelopment were not mainly internal (but external i.e. demand for oil internationally).

• The sudden opening of international relations with China allowed the rest of the world to learn details of her pathways to development.

• China had created “miracle of modernization” in two decades without any foreign assistance.

• The western world was suspicious over China’s success.

• Fearful of China’s economic hegemony.• Is this leading to a new kind of war??• What caused war in Iraq??• Is war a strategy/a form of investment??• Awareness on American double standards and

secrecy.

That’s all folks !!

development communication lecture 2 - bretton woods and development communication ppt (1)

Documents