reseach paper for Pro moss
Wilson Li
iics515-oc-october_20-2014.pptxIICS515-Intercultural and International Communication Theory Monday October 20, 2014
Theories of International Development and Development Communication: An Overview
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outline
1. What is modernity?
2. What is development?
3. Modernization Theory as a Theory of Socio-economic Development
Source: Thomas McPhail, Global Communication, Chapter 2, “Development Research Traditions and Global Communication” and a number of other source materials
4. Modernization Theory as a Theory of Media and Culture
Source: Thomas McPhail, Global Communication, Chapter 2, “Development Research Traditions and Global Communication” and a number of other source materials
Dependency Theory: The Model Developed to Criticize Modernization Theory
Socio-Economic dimensions
“McDonaldization”: Media and cultural dimensions
6. What comes after modernization and dependency theory?
7. The United Nations’ 2015 Millennium Development Goals and Communication: An Exercise
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keywords
modernity
postmodernity
development
Modernization theory:
As an economic theory (Rostow)
the five stages of growth
(b) As a theory of cultural change
modernization
Dependency theory:
Lenin’s theory of imperialism
underdevelopment
McDonaldization
formal rationality (Weber)
the irrationality of rationality
Other models of development and development communication:
Structural adjustment
Sustainable development
Participatory communication
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A note regarding our reading for this lecture and some housekeeping in the oncampus cohort:
Chapter 2 is our concern today:
We will be using chapter 2 in McPhail’s textbook, “Development Research Traditions and Global Communication,” and not Chapter 3, “The Message” from the McPhail textbook
Chapter 2 is the more important of the two, and the one cited by our exam question here
Room locations for the next three classes:
Wednesday October 22: Blue Heron House
Monday October 27: Blue Heron House
Wednesday October 29: with the online cohort and the visiting students from Zhejiang Gongshang University (ZGU) in Beijing (class is at a different time, 3-4:40)
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Oncampus cohort: Our exam question attached to this lecture
The modernization and dependency models represent the two major ways in which socio-economic development in an international context, and the relationship of communication to that development, were understood in the post-World War II world. Remember that the dependency model was conceived as a way of criticizing modernization.
Describe the two models, in your own words. As you do so, reflect on how and why both reveal to us certain ideas and features relating to the nature of “modernity,” a concept discussed in the lecture.
Chapter 2, “Development Research Traditions and Global Communication,” from the textbook Global Communication, is especially relevant to this answer. Chapter 3, “The Message: The Role of International Organizations,” is not as useful here. Please give primary attention to chapter 2.
Our plan for today
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Modernity and development: what are they?
The modernization model of development and communication
The dependency model of development and communication
Other models after modernization and dependency
The United Nations Millennium Development Goals and communication: a case study
Why are we discussing development and communication today?
In putting social and economic development together with development communication (in the form of media and culture either addressed to the developing world by the West, or created in the developing world), you may be forgiven for thinking we are involved in some obscure, technical debate that largely dates to the 1950s-70s
There is a crassness or ideological edge to the debate between the two dominant models – modernization, with its aggressively pro-Western and capitalist views, and dependency, with its Marxist orientation—that feels old-fashioned
That said, what we have to recognize is that these two positions are “poles” or parameters in which one of the most important conversations that humanity has had with itself have been conducted: that is, what shall be the social, economic, political and cultural destiny for the world?
The debate between modernization and dependency, and subsequent more recent positions we will briefly discuss in the lecture, is just as much about the place of the West in the 21st century as it is about the “development” of the less developed countries or LDCs
Indeed, in the wake of the 2008 “Great Recession,” the worst economic crisis in the world economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s, people in the West have been asking questions of themselves that resonate with the great debate between modernization and dependency
The Western publics and their governments have debated questions like the following:
Does our culture encourage excessive spending?
Is the Western liberal capitalist way of life compatible with the environmental integrity of the planet?
Is the middle class disappearing, and is economic inequality growing in the West?
Are there enough jobs in a post-industrial economy, as the West ships manufacturing overseas?
Can China modernize without killing its people with pollution?
So when we examine modernization and dependency as models of socio-economic and cultural development, we are examining models that are just as relevant to the LDCs as they are to the future of the Western economy and society
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1. What is modernity?
We are familiar with the word “modern,” and use it when we speak of something that is up-to-date or current, like “modern life”
However, the word “modernity” has a deeper and more comprehensive meaning in the social sciences, and specifically, within the study of communication
Modernity refers to the comprehensive ideological and cultural condition that unites and gives coherence to the many unique political, social, economic, and other changes that emerge in the early modern period of the 16-17th centuries, and that are consolidated in a more mature form in the 18-20th centuries
The key attribute of modernity is the increasing presence of rationality both in public discourse, and also in politics and governance, organizational life, economics, and the broader culture
By rationality here we mean logic and critical thought based in evidence and argument
People before the modern era, of course, were capable of logic and critical thought, but these were not public and socially shared, but rather expressed in private life and (in the case of scholars) their intellectual work
Life before the modern era was largely given its shape by tradition and by faith
The 18th century, a period in Western history known as the Enlightenment, is the century especially synonymous with the arrival of the modern
It’s in the 18th century that the power of rationality, notably as argued by the French Enlightenment philosophers like Voltaire and Rousseau, begins to manifest modern consciousness in the world in a major way
This is followed by:
Scottish Enlightenment philosophers like Adam Smith (the intellectual founder of capitalism) and David Hume
English thinkers like Mary Wollstonecraft (the first modern feminist)
American rationalist intellectuals like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson (the latter also key figures in the American Revolution of the late 18th century)
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Two definitions of modernity
“At its simplest, modernity is a shorthand term for modern society or industrial civilization. Portrayed in more detail, it is associated with (1) a certain set of attitudes towards the world, the idea of the world as open to transformation by human intervention; (2) a complex of economic institutions, especially industrial production and a market economy; (3) a certain range of political institutions, including the nation-state and mass democracy. Largely as a result of these characteristics, modernity is vastly more dynamic than any previous type of social order. It is a society—more technically, a complex of institutions—which unlike any preceding culture lives in the future rather than the past.”
From Anthony Giddens, one of the great social theorists of modernity
“Modernity is generally held to have come into being with the Renaissance and was defined in relation to Antiquity [classical Greece and Rome]. From the point of view of German sociological theory, which is very influential, modernity implies the progressive economic and administrative rationalization and differentiation of the social world. (By differentiation is meant, for example, the separation of fact from value, of the ethical from the theoretical spheres.) For Weber, Tonnies and Simmel these were the processes which brought into being the modern capitalist industrial state. In short, modernity can be taken as a summary term, referring to that cluster of social, economic and political systems brought into being in the West from somewhere around the eighteenth century onwards.”
Madan Sarup,
An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism,
p. 130
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The essential features of modernity
In speaking of modernity, we are acknowledging that we are talking about a cultural pattern we cannot “see” directly but that is visible in its symptoms or outcomes and that acts to bind and give coherence to these symptoms and outcomes
These symptoms and outcomes are sometimes obvious and explicit, e.g., modern science and medicine, industry, rational government and corporate administration, modern media
But some of the essential features of modernity are more subtle and hard to see, and so we can list a few of both kinds here (and more in the attached chart)
Reason (or rationality) as the centerpiece of culture
Empiricism (the idea that we can know the world through the data available to our senses; that the world is “knowable” and that the only knowledge worth having is knowledge that is objectively measurable)
Science as guide and technology as means to a better world
Secularism (life after God)
Representative forms of government, e.g., liberal democracy
Creation of fundamental categories and distinctions, e.g., birth of the encyclopedia
Strong identification with the West and Westernization (though, over time, new models of modernity emerge that are not strongly Western-identified, such as in China)
Clip from Chaplin’s 1936 film, Modern Times
See the separate document listing modern and postmodern elements of society (handout attached to the lecture notes
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The media and modernity: how do they relate to each other?
Print and audio-visual media have historically been the primary carriers of “modernity,” though electronic media do their part in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
Modernity is some sense is the real “program” that plays on radio and television, and is the message relayed by telegraph, telephone, etc.
That is because it is modern consciousness that was transmitted in the endless stories told us by news and entertainment media during the 18th and 19th century era of print media, and the early-to-mid 20th century of radio, film and television
The media are not the only means by which modernity is built in our lives; other carriers of modernity include the nation state, the market, science and technology, nuclear family, division of labour, etc.
This same capacity of media to deliver modern consciousness and culture was a central premise of the “modernization” model of socio-economic development and communication
That said, media has a special relationship to modernity, and we will explore that in the following slide
”
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What makes media modern?
Our traditional “mass” media (radio, television, the daily newspaper) are entirely products of the modern, and also serve to propagate modern values and ideas in the word through media content
Mass media exemplify the rationality and universalism celebrated in the modern; to illustrate this, we see information circulated from centralized sources to large audiences
Mass media were built on economies of scale with expensive infrastructure (TV stations, printing presses), large profit margins, and with a highly specialized division of labour, features of media infrastructure that also signify modernity
Mass media assumed a stable world of meaning, and a confidence that words and pictures re-presented the world accurately
This modern outlook is associated with the commitment within modernity (notably, its epistemology) to viewing reality as something that can be known definitively, from which knowledge can be extracted and accumulated, and in which knowledge can then be applied to making practical change in the world
Mass media were typically one-way in direction, and credited news sources with cultural authority and credibility
Mass media suggest a view of culture that is also modern in nature, in that it compartmentalizes reality and organizes it into rational and separate categories
We see this modern outlook in how advertising and editorial content, entertainment and news, were separate elements in the news business
Radio fan magazine from the 1920s, depicting what television might some day look like
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What is modernity and how does it relate to modernization?
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Modernity:
A comprehensive process of social transformation, strongly attached to rationality (and related values such as universalism), and identified with the period dating from the 18th century Enlightenment to the mid-20th century
Modernization:
(1) The process of entering modernity or becoming modern
(2) A particular reading or packaging of modernity, expressed in a formula, and delivered to the developing world in the post-WWII decolonization period as a Western solution to the economic, political and social development of the developing world, e.g., the Green Revolution as a form of agricultural modernization in the late 1940s-60s
When does modernity end, and what comes after it?
There is a long and contentious debate about whether modernity has actually ended, be it in the West or elsewhere
However, most scholars acknowledge that certain changes began to show in Western culture in the 1960s, in the era of the student movement, identity politics, and the counterculture of that era, and that these changes as they continue today might testify to a different epoch or period in cultural history that comes after the modern
Such a period is conventionally called “post-modernity” – that is, what comes after modernity
Definition of postmodernity:
“Postmodernity (also spelled post-modernity or termed the postmodern condition) is generally used to describe the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century—in the 1980s or early 1990s—and that it was replaced by postmodernity, while others would extend modernity to cover the developments denoted by postmodernity, while some believe that modernity ended after World War II. The idea of the post-modern condition is sometimes characterised as a culture stripped of its capacity to function in any linear or autonomous state as opposed to the progressive mindstate of Modernism.”
From Wikipedia entry for postmodernity
The postmodern is characterized by a number of features that invert and challenge the modern era and culture
Among these features of postmodernity are the following:
Simulation and self-reference
Breakdown of the self
Greater presence of irrationality in the culture (e.g., difficulty of distinguishing the real from the mediated, paranoia, fundamentalist faith, etc.)
Globalization and the decline of the nation-state
Digital and social media (as contrasted with traditional mass media of modernity, such as the newspaper)
Greater diversity in Western and other cultures
See the attached chart for a list of many more features of postmodernity
Roy Lichtenstein, Masterpiece, 1962
An example of postmodern art
David Harvey’s excellent book, The Condition of Postmodernity (PDF here)
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How and why does modernity relate to today’s material?
When we talk about socio-economic development in the developing world after World War II, whether at the level of developing their economies or involving media and culture in that process, we are really talking about the terms in which modernity enters into the lives of people in the developing world
Although the modernization model of development, with its economic and cultural dimensions, did propose to bring “modernity” into the developing world, modernity is not a phenomenon that can be easily managed, controlled or applied in to any country of culture
Both the modernization and dependency models have strong opinions about modernity:
The modernization model sees it as an entirely good thing, and as something that needs to be applied to the developing world urgently and without regard to traditional culture in those countries
The dependency model views modernity as something that is conflated with capitalism, and as something that serves as an alibi or rationale for extending the capitalist interests of the developed world into the rest of the world
Neither is correct in these views, because neither fully appreciated that modernity is relatively autonomous in how it develops and varied in its consequences
Some of modernity’s outcomes are good, and some are negative for the people who experience it, whether they live in the developed or in the developing world
Also, what we see around the world are new forms of modernity emerging that adapt to local cultures and create modernities that do not resemble the original Western form, such as in the Middle East and in China, Japan and South Korea
2. What is development?
The idea of “development” is traced to the French philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), one of the founders of what is today called sociology
For Saint-Simon, societies were understood to grow and develop just like a biological organism might, e.g., a plant, animal, or person
Development in the dictionary sense reflects Saint-Simon’s idea, as development in the dictionary means to “unfold, reveal, or be revealed,” to “bring or come from a latent to an active or visible state,” to “make or become fuller, more elaborate or systematic”
Saint-Simon’s idea was that societies, like biological organisms, progressed from simplicity to complexity, and could be understood as having a potential that could only be realized over time
The the late 18th and the 19th century was a time when biological categories were readily mixed with social and cultural phenomena, and this was typical of the idea of development that Saint-Simon originated
The idea of development in this sense was initially transferred to the process whereby Western Europe and North America became modern and capitalist in the 19th century
The same idea was then transferred to the nations emerging from colonialism in Asia and Africa in the mid-20th century
Sources for this section: Mike Mason, Chapter 1, “The Third World: From Western Perspectives.” In Development and Disorder: A History of the Third World Since 1945, and from Geoffrey Reeves. Communications and the ‘Third World.’
Henri de Saint-Simon,
1760-1825
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We now make the transition from discussing modernity and development in general terms to exploring the two main models of economic development and how they relate to media and culture
Preparing for modernization vs. dependency theory: The two theories mapped
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Modernization theory as an economic model of international development, e.g., Walter Rostow’s “five stages of growth” in his book The Stages of Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960)
Dependency model of international development, e.g., Paul Baran, Immanuel Wallerstein, Andre Gunder Frank
Modernization theory as a theory of media and culture, e.g., Daniel Lerner, Wilbur Schramm
The theory of “electronic colonialism” or “cultural imperialism,” e.g., Herbert Schiller, Thomas McPhail
Why is this debate useful to us in defining the foundations of international communication theory? Historical reasons
In historical terms, the competing arguments and literatures relating to modernization and dependency are among the oldest in international communication
That’s because communication itself did not start as an academic discipline until the late 1940s, when the first departments of communication were created in the United States
The formation of communication as a discipline was therefore contemporaneous with (i.e, happened at the same time as) the beginning of the post-WWII wave of anti-colonial struggles in light of the break-up of the European colonial empires after WWII
Thus, it’s not surprising that major early communication theorists like Daniel Lerner, Wilbur Schramm and Herbert Schiller turned to this remarkable wave of decolonization happening throughout Africa and Asia in the mid-20th century
It’s not surprising because the drama and the large issues and questions that arose from contact between modernity and large parts of the developing world were fascinating, complex and important
Note that most of Latin America had decolonized, with important exceptions like Cuba, earlier in the 19th century
With post-WWII decolonization, the world in effect was being reinvented again after several centuries of aggressive Western colonialism, and a large number of countries and cultures that had been under Western or Ottoman (the Islamic empire based in Turkey) control were becoming free and expressing themselves
Anti-colonial (anti-apartheid) poster, South Africa, 1980s
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Why is this debate useful to us in defining the foundations of international communication theory? Intellectual reasons
The end of the colonial era brought the developing world more directly into contact with modernity, and did so without the immediate brokerage offered by the Western colonial governments of the colonial era
So as peoples sought self-determination around the world, one of their first challenges was to engage with modernity in its more comprehensive form
What modernity meant and what form it took became a central question:
would it be a clone of the Western experience (i.e., as modernization theory predicted)?
or would it be on terms that allowed the newly independent nations the opportunity to be modern in ways that were to their advantage or that supported the best of their cultures and traditions?
With the fuller experience of modernity and the end of colonialism, the peoples of the developing world became full-fledged subjects in history, and not the colonial wards of Western imperial power
In that sense, we see staged an awkward and yet terribly important conversation about the relationship of the West and non-West, the legacy of slavery and colonialism, and the challenges of sharing a world that had suddenly become more complex and crowded with new nations seeking to address the West and each other as self-constituted sovereign entities
Mahatma Gandhi,
leader of India’s anti-colonial struggle against the British Empire, which India achieved in 1947
2. Modernization Theory as a Theory of Socio-economic Development
Modernization offered to a just-emerging developing world a liberal capitalist solution to the problems of countries in the developing world emerging from colonial rule
The modernization model had the support of many senior Western academics, think tanks, and governments as they responded to the end of colonial empires in Asia and Africa in the 1950s-1970s
The modernization model’s primary objective was to make over the former colonies in the developed world’s image, and thus implicitly discourage non-capitalist or alternative models of development within the global geopolitical “Cold War” competition with the Soviet Union
With the modernization model, international economic development was understood to be a linear and formulaic process on a liberal capitalist basis
Walter Rostow, the main economic theorist for modernization, developed a five-stage formula facilitating the progress of a given developing country to a developed stage
His major book was the bible of the modernization model, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, published in 1960
We can appreciate from the title how central the modernization model was not only to development, but to fighting the Cold War and defeating Communism
That is, we can appreciate how much of the modernization model was also a Cold War geopolitical strategy, intended to keep as much of the developing world outside of the Soviet sphere of influence as possible
Cover of Walter Rostow’s The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960)
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Rostow: The five stages of economic growth
(i) traditional society in a given developing country
Output is limited because of the lack of science and technology
Political power is too widely distributed, and society lacks a central authority and command structure necessary to lead and coordinate development
(ii) pre-conditions for take-off
A modern culture supportive of capitalist development takes root (here media and culture takes a role)
Here we have a dual society, where the traditional and the modern co-exist
(iii) take-off
Here traditional society is overcome and displaced, and modern culture and economy take hold
Heavy investment is made in order to create a production infrastructure, e.g., farms, mines, factories
(iv) drive to maturity
The less-developed country in question joins the international system
(v) high consumption
Here we see shift from a production to a consumption-oriented economy
The focus is on creating a consumer society following the lifestyle of a Western developed country
The goal is thus to create the developing world in the image of the developed world
Rostow’s five stages mapped
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McPhail on the modernization model’s social and economic dimension From chapter 2, “Development Research Traditions and Global Communication”
McPhail takes a strongly negative view of modernization theory, offering us a sketch of major modernization theorists like Walter Rostow, Daniel Lerner, and Wilbur Schramm
While the modernization model guided the efforts of developed nations in their development of the LDCs, McPhail offers growth rates in LDCs that lag the developed world, limited access to digital media (the “digital divide”), and high illiteracy rates in much of the LDCs, as evidence of the modernization model’s failure
3. Modernization theory as a theory of media and culture
As we can see already in Rostow’s 5-stage model, there is a recognition that culture has a significant part in why societies in the developing world were believed slow to develop
That is, Rostow argues that the supposed conservatism of traditional culture must be replaced with a modern one before economic and political development on capitalism and liberal democratic terms can occur
This view encouraged the creation of a separate and substantial literature and argument relating to media and culture as elements in development in the post-WWII international environment
The major figures in modernization theory as it relates to communication are Daniel Lerner and Wilbur Schramm
Schramm is one of the acknowledged founders of communication as an academic discipline, and was chair of the world’s first-ever department of communication studies in the mid-1940s (University of Iowa)
The classic texts here are Daniel Lerner’s The Passing of Traditional Society (1958) and Wilbur Schramm’s Mass Media and National Development (1964)
We can thus appreciate that the origins of communication studies as an academic discipline are significantly implicated in the modernization argument and its theoretical repertoire
Wilbur Schramm
(the founder of communication studies in North America and a modernization theorist)
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Modernization theory as a theory of media and culture
Modernization embraces the “free flow” doctrine, which argues that information should circulate without restriction, i.e., as a “free flow” among cultures of the world and across borders without censorship or obstacles to trade in media and cultural goods and services
In this way, less developed countries would benefit from the transmission of modern ideas and images from the developed world, and develop more quickly
“Free flow” embodies the best principles of freedom of the press and the right of everyone to have free and full information
Western media would act to develop a work ethic and a consumer culture in the publics within less developed countries
The Western media would act to encourage mental attributes of the modern self: self-discipline, literacy, identification with the nation-state instead of tribe or clan, a break with world of tradition, the ability to save and invest capital
The level of media development in a given developing country is taken to be indicative of its economic and political development over all
Traditional cultures were believed to be slow to change and innovate, and to be the primary obstacle to development
Such cultures had to be transformed before development was to be effective, and that was the role of Western media—to change and “modernize” the developing country
Modernization was thus understood by the modernization theorists as follows:
An automatic and ahistorical process that develops on a largely autonomous and teleological basis (teleology means “orientated toward some specific and preordained outcome”)
A process with a strong sense of inevitability and rightness
A process without much consideration for human agency, power, resistance, or cultural relativism
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McPhail on the modernization model’s media and cultural dimension From chapter 2, “Development Research Traditions and Global Communication”
McPhail notes that a major premise of modernization theory was that capacity for media production in the LDCs would be developed, but this did not happen with any significant success
Western media and culture remained a dominant part of the experience of peoples in LDCs, then and now
The school of media theory most strongly associated with the modernization model of development and communication is the “functionalist” model, better known in our discipline as the “media effects” tradition
The “media effects” tradition was the tradition of communication theory that was dominant at the time that communication studies began as a discipline in the 1940s
The media effects tradition tended to view media outside of historical context, in a linear fashion, and in a behaviouristic and deterministic way
In its support of the modernization model, media effects failed to recognize that communication, media and culture are an inseparable part of social structure and cannot just be added from “outside” via Western media and institutional sources
A major book in the “media effects” tradition
Major media effects researchers?
Wilbur Schramm
Paul Lazarsfeld
Elihu Katz
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McPhail offers an excellent summary here of the role of communication in the modernization model:
“The development of mass communication was portrayed under the dominant paradigm [the modernization model] as part of a universal, inevitable sequence of changes that traditional societies undergo in the transition to modernity. Mass communication was thought to function best in the service of centralized government agencies when it was geared toward raising the public’s aspirations and facilitating the acceptance of new ideas, values and inventions for the purpose of overall growth and higher gross national product (GNP). Critical questions about the impact on traditions, tastes, values, languages, history, role models or cultures inherent in foreign mass media were simply not addressed.” (McPhail, p. 38)
Criticisms of modernization theory as a theory of media and culture
Modernization is assimilationist, i.e., practices cultural assimilation, forcing people to conform to Western culture
Modernization has no respect for cultural relativism, i.e., the idea that cultures should be judged on their own terms, and not according to values imposed upon them
Modernity is not a formula or recipe that can be applied to solve a problem, but a complex historical phenomenon that manifests and is experienced in uneven and unpredictable ways
Modernity assumes different and unpredictable forms when it makes contact with traditional cultures, e.g., Japan’s blend of traditional culture and hyper-modernity
The free flow doctrine is a flimsy justification for what is essentially a “free trade” policy with respect to media and culture
The result of this “free flow doctrine” is that less developed countries are flooded with American media and pop culture, are punished for protecting their cultural sovereignty and developing their own capacity for media and cultural production, and come to develop tastes and aspirations for a developed-world level of consumption that their domestic economies cannot satisfy
Modernization theory sees media as neutral vehicles for communicating modernity, ignoring the extent to which the media are themselves social, political, economic and cultural phenomena with consequences for the developing world
This view of media as neutral vehicles or channels was typical of the tradition of media theory dominant in the 1940s-early 1960s, i.e., so-called “media effects” theory, which informed the modernization model
Modernization theory was a geopolitical strategy used by the West to fight the Cold War and keep the Soviet Union’s influence in the less developed countries to a minimum
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Modernization Theory and the role of Western media in the modernization process
While the modernization theorists acknowledged the importance of many institutions and phenomena in achieving the more comprehensive form of modernization they believed necessary to development in the LDCs, he singles out media for special attention
“The mass media, finally, are a major instrument of social change. They make indispensable inputs to the psycho-political life of a transitional society via the minds and hearts of its people.” (Daniel Lerner, Political Culture and Political Development, 1963)
Media relate to modernization in three ways:
Media encourage new aspirations in people, and thus new frustrations once what is wanted outpaces what can be gotten, e.g., wealth, modernity, access to technology
Media spread inexorably around the world, and do so in a way that is irreversible, i.e., people do not seek to return to oral culture and remove print and electronic media from their lives
Modernization can only succeed if assisted by a “clarifying” body of communication theory and practice, e.g., such as the modernization model
Why do media spread in a given society?
As economic development proceeds, mass media develops in tandem
This is because information is a commodity (i.e., a good for sale in the marketplace) like any other
Thus, as market forces develop, so does media mature and become more influential, since it is part of and thus elevated by the development of a capitalist economy too
“modernization [can be] conceived as the maximization of satisfaction.” (Lerner, p. 78)
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5. Dependency theory: (i) Social and economic dimensions
The major figures in the dependency model as a way of thinking about social and economic development include Paul Baran and Andre Gunder Frank
The dependency model arose as a model critical of modernization model, and from the Marxist side of the political spectrum (hence opposite the market-oriented capitalist model favoured by modernization)
The dependency model is best thought of as a model critical of the modernization process, and of the modernization model of socio-economic and cultural development
The dependency model, however, was not very concerned with proposing an alternative model of development, but mostly served to criticize modernization as model and process
The dependency model’s primary thesis was that “development” in fact did not develop the developing world, but rather acted to encourage its continued “dependency” on the advanced capitalist nations
We call this pattern of perpetuating the exploitation of the developing world after colonialism ended “neo-colonialism”
Neo-colonialism is defined as the situation whereby a country has formal political independence (e.g., they have a state, free vote, etc.) but their economy is controlled by foreign corporations, transnational organizations like the World Bank and the IMF, and advanced nations (whether in the West or in contemporary Russia, with its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe)
Paul Baran’s 1957 book, The Political Economy of Growth, and Gunder Frank's 1967 book Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America, represented the major political and economic treatises on dependency theory
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The Marxist basis for dependency theory
Marx believed that capitalism used colonialism as a means to reinvest surplus capital generated in First World
Over time, this would mean that the developing world would grow richer, and the developed world proportionately more poor
Given this thesis, Marx believed that revolution would necessarily appear in the advanced capitalist nations initially, then spread to the colonial nations
However, 30 years after Marx, revolutions began not in U.S. or Britain, but in backward Tsarist Russia, and then in many desperately poor and underdeveloped colonies in the 1950s onward
Marx's ideas had then to be revised, and Lenin (the founder of the Russian revolution) developed what was to be called the Leninist theory of imperialism
For Lenin, imperialism was understood to be the most advanced form of capitalism
Instead of capitalists exporting capital from the developed to the developing world, Lenin argued that the reverse was true: capitalism robbed the developing world, creating tensions there that led to revolutionary conditions and social movements devoted to anti-colonial struggle
That is, capitalism took capital away from the developing world, e.g. plantations, slavery, selling of cheap goods, and imported it to the advanced capitalist nations of the West where it was used to help capitalism smooth out its own contradictions
Karl Marx, 1818-1883
Vladimir Lenin, 1870-1924
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What the dependency theorists believed
The dependency theorists, like Baran and Frank, believed Marx's theory of development was wrong because Marx overlooked the ability of First World nations to organize and manage capitalism on a global basis
The particular form this organization took was a phenomenon these authors identified as "underdevelopment”
The key point in understanding "underdevelopment" is that the authors demonstrated that poverty in the developing world was not accidental, but the product of the logic of capitalism itself, as it sucked value from the developing world and deposited it in the advanced capitalist nations
The modernization model was therefore an alibi for "underdevelopment" process
Underdevelopment was not an accidental or unintended feature of development, but an intrinsic part of the way capitalism worked
The primary solution to underdevelopment was political revolution
Dependency theorists aligned themselves with radical and progressive elements in developing countries, and with liberation struggles in those countries that sought violent means (e.g., Algeria, Zimbabwe) to end colonialism
World map of the least developed countries in 2014
Source: UN Conference for Trade and Development
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The dependency model: (ii) McDonaldization: media and cultural dimensions
Introduction to McDonaldization
Dependency theory takes believes that modernization is a means of imposing cultural imperialism on a developing country and culture, i.e., imposing First World values, systems, and ideology on the developing world at the expense of the culture there
In other words, dependency theory takes a “cultural imperialism” approach to the issue of what modernization is (and what modernization theory condones)
As we have already examined “cultural imperialism” in view of McPhail’s chapter 1 account of his theory of “electronic colonialism,” we’re going to take a different approach to the nature of Western cultural influence in the developing world – and indeed, even here in the West
That different approach is a famous argument called McDonaldization, named after the hamburger restaurant chain
The author of the argument is sociologist George Ritzer, a professor at the University of Maryland and celebrated author of a number of books including:
The McDonaldization of Society (1993)
Enchanting a Disenchanted World: Continuity and Change in the Cathedrals of Consumption (1999)
Globalization: The Essentials (2010)
George Ritzer (1940-)
His personal website
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What is McDonaldization?
Ritzer argues that the fast-food restaurant has replaced the bureaucracy as the most powerful agent of rationalization in the world
His thesis is as follows:
“Overall, the central thesis is that McDonald's represents a monumentally important development and the process that it has helped spawn, McDonaldization, is engulfing more and more sectors of society and areas of the world.” (p. 16)
Ritzer identifies four primary characteristics to McDonaldization:
i. efficiency
ii. quantifiability and calculability
iii. predictability
iv. control, especially through the replacement of human with non-human technologies
"In sum, McDonald's (and the McDonald's model) has succeeded because it seems to offer the diner a lot of food for little money and a slight expenditure of effort. It has also flourished because it has been able to exert greater control through nonhuman technologies over both employees and customers, leading then to behave the way the organization wishes them to." (p. 11)
The sociological precursor of McDonaldization is sociologist Max Weber's work on "formal rationality"
Source: George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society.
PDF of an essay by Ritzer where he offers an overview of his McDonaldization thesis
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Max Weber and formal rationality
Max Weber
1864-1920
Major works:
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905)
Economy and Society (1922)
Weber, like Marx, is one of the founding figures in modern social theory, and author of a number of major works that provide a foundation for theory of all kinds, including communication theory
Although all societies through history have had rational elements, the "formal rationality" is unique to the modern West
Here is a definition of "formal rationality"
"What is formal rationality? To Weber, formal rationality means that the search by people for the optimum means to a given end is shaped by rules, regulations, and larger social structures. Thus, individuals are not left to their own devices in searching for the best means of attaining a given objective. Rather, there exist rules, regulations and structures that either predetermine or help them discover the optimum methods." (Ritzer, p. 19)
Hence people no longer have to improvise means to get things done, as these are objectively provided
McDonalds brings together many of the modern manifestations of formal rationality - scientific management, the assembly line, etc. in one cumulative process
"McDonald's and Mcdonaldization, then, do not represent something new, but rather the culmination of a series of rationalization processes that had been occurring throughout the twentieth century.”
The irrationality of rationality: a major outcome of McDonaldization
Ritzer argues that rationalization ironically generates the very opposite of what are thought to be its positive features: inefficiency, loss of calculability and predictability, and the loss of control
We see in the ironic outcomes that development and progress bring in our lives in Canada (or China): fast food makes us fat; cars create gridlock; fossil fuels create climate change; technology alienates us; etc.
“At the most general level, [the irrationality of rationality] is simply the overarching label for many of the negative effects and aspects of McDonaldization. More specifically, it can be seen as the opposite of rationality and its several dimensions. That is, McDonalidization can be seen as leading to efficiency, unpredictability, incalculability, and loss of control. Most specifically, irrationality means that rational systems are unreasonable systems - they serve to deny the basic humanity, the human reason, of the people who work within them or are served by them.” (Ritzer, p. 121)
The “irrationality of rationality” is a different way of thinking critically about the modernization process in the developing world too
We can see the “irrationality of rationality” in the disorder and dysfunction that the dependency theorists believed modernization as a process brought to the lives and cultures of peoples in the developing world
That is, where modernization was thought to bring development, it instead (according to dependency theory) brought new ways in which the economies and cultures of people abroad were controlled either by international capital or by their own corrupt and inefficient governments in the developing countries
Criticisms of dependency theory
Dependency theory was a critique of modernization, but not itself a positive model for an alternative to modernization
Dependency theory had a fatalistic view of the LDC’s capacity to resist or adapt capitalism, and viewed peoples in the LDCs as having little resilience or autonomy in the face of modernization
Dependency theory tended to credit capitalism and modernization with overwhelming power, and did not have a nuanced view of the nature of modernity
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McPhail on dependency theory
McPhail acknowledges the work of the dependency theorists, but notes that their influence waned when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, leaving their Marxist orientation with less of a real-world example as an alternative to capitalist modernization
The work of the dependency theorists is aligned with what McPhail calls the “structuralist” model of media, and what we might better call the “political economy of communication” tradition
McPhail quotes Herbert Schiller, who we earlier identified in a different lecture with the cultural imperialism concept, in a beautiful passage on the nature of communication
“Communication, it needs to be said, includes much more than messages and recognizable circuits through which the messages flow. It defines social reality and thus influences the organization of work, the character of technology, the curriculum of the educational system, formal and informal, and the use of ‘free’ time—actually the basic social arrangements of living.” (Schiller, quoted in McPhail, p. 40)
Major structuralist or political economy of communication theorists?
Herbert Schiller
Dan Schiller (Herbert’s son)
Dallas Smythe (one of the first communication researchers in Canada)
Robert McChesney
6. What comes after modernization and dependency theory?
modernization (1950s)
dependency (1960s)
world system theory (1970s)
Major figures: Ferdinand Braudel, Immanuel Wallerstein
World system theory was derived from dependency theory, and tried to document in extensive historical detail how the systematic underdevelopment of the 3W happened
World system theory saw the world market as the driving force of history, and saw expansion of capitalism as inevitable
neo-liberalism and structural adjustment (1980s)
“Structural adjustment”, as administered by the major international lending institutions, most importantly the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), argued that LDCs had to drop longstanding practice of protecting their markets, and open their market structures up to international trade
This meant currency devaluation, the downsizing of state bureaucracies, the lowering of tariff barriers to trade, curbs on welfare and social programs, and allowing World Bank and IMF lenders to have significant control over economic policy in a given country
Most crucial in the 1980s was the Third World’s debt, a debt taken on during the modernization period, and the interest payments which now crippled many Third World economies
What comes after modernization and dependency theory?
sustainable development (1990s)
Definition of “sustainable development”:
“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” (Brundtland Commission report of 1987)
The 1990s saw a wave of environmental consciousness in the First World, and a concern that 1980s neo-liberalism and structural adjustment policies had favoured market expansion at expense of environmental and social factors
Sustainable development argued for a model of socio-economic development that was compatible with the health of the natural environment
“Sustainable development” is a term coined by the UN commission organized under the direction of Norwegian prime minister Gro Brundtland (hence the Brundtland Commission)
Beijing marathon, 2014
What comes after modernization and dependency theory? Content from McPhail, chapter 2, “Development Research Traditions and Global Communication”
McPhail addresses the future of development and communication, arguing that its future is one that is driven by policy
“The key aspect is that for decades the old paradigm of modernization had an economic focus or lens, whereas the new focus is on policy matters with a social and cultural lens.” (McPhail, p. 31)
For McPhail, the trend in development communication is to be entirely responsive to local conditions in the LDCs
“Part of the change is a bottom-up grassroots approach rather than the top-down bureaucratic practices that have dominated the field since the end of the WWII. Much of the early emphasis, projects, and funding was motivated by a desire to thwart the growth of communism around the globe, particularly in underdeveloped nations.” (McPhail, p. 31)
The preference now in development communication is toward a “participatory communication” model where Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs) work closely with local organizations and individuals in the LDCs
“[P]articipatory communication… is being sensitive to local traditions, culture and language, by engaging locals at every stage of both planning and implementation.” (McPhail, p. 44)
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7. The United Nations’ 2015 Millennium Development Goals and Communication: An Exercise
In 2007, the United Nations published a guide to the role of communication in achieving the “Millennium Development Goals”
These goals delineate 8 major objectives of the United Nations that it intends to achieve by 2015
These goals were first articulated in time for the millennium in 2000
As part of that document, there was a brief critique of the two models we are now familiar with – modernization and dependency – and some thoughts as to where the debate about development and communication might go next
Read those two pages, attached to your notes today, and then be prepared to answer some questions relating to them in class
UN video on 2015 Millennium Development goals
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Questions for discussion in class
What is the major criticism of the modernization and dependency models in this document?
What is your opinion of the alternative that the United Nations proposes as a new way of thinking about communication and development?
