"Across the global South, new media technologies have brought about new forms of cultural production, distribution and reception. The spread of cassette recorders in the 1970s; the introduction of analogue and digital video formats in the 80s and 90s; the pervasive availability of recycled computer
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hardware; the global dissemination of the internet and mobile phones in the new millennium: all these have revolutionised the access of previously marginalised populations to the cultural flows of global modernity. Yet this access also engenders a pirate occupation of the modern: it ducks and deranges the globalised designs of property, capitalism and personhood set by the North. Positioning itself against Eurocentric critiques by corporate lobbies, libertarian readings or classical Marxist interventions, this volume offers a profound postcolonial revaluation of the social, epistemic and aesthetic workings of piracy. It projects how postcolonial piracy persistently negotiates different trajectories of property and self at the crossroads of the global and the local." (Publisher description)
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"China’s concessionary loans and support to development projects have tended to shift balances of power by favouring certain actors over others and have challenged existing development paradigms, revitalizing ideas of the developmental state. Building on fieldwork conducted in Ghana, Ethiopia, and
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Kenya this article explains to which extent China’s entrance in the media and telecommunication sector actually challenges the dominant, Western-driven approaches to media development, promoting a state centred vision of the information society." (Abstract)
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"According to Dissanayake, the Sarvodaya movement encompasses the ideal of the harmonious social order and the principle of self-reliance and self-transformation as envisioned and encouraged by Buddhist teaching. The Sarvodaya movement also duly asserts that the idea of development should include no
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t merely materialistic and economic advancement but also moral growth and social fulfilment. Dissanayake outlines four main approaches to communication and development and succintly states that it is the notion of self-reliance that distinguishes the Sarvodaya movement from the dominant paradigm of development communication." (Page 467)
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"The collection covers a wide range of topics: the emergence and evolution of the field; issues and challenges in cross-cultural and intercultural inquiry; cultural wisdom and communication practices in context; identity and intercultural competence in a multicultural society; the effects of globali
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zation; and ethical considerations. Many readings first appeared outside the mainstream Western academy, and offer diverse theoretical lenses on culture and communication practices in the world community." (Publisher description)
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"In this chapter, Guo-Ming Chen portrays two faces of communication in Chinese culture. He thematizes harmony, one of the core Chinese cultural values, to paint a picture of the first face. According to him, in order to achieve harmony, Chinese people would (1) follow the principles of jen (benevole
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nce), yi (righteousness), and li (rite/courtesy), (2) properly adjust to shi (temporal contingencies), wei (spatial contingencies), and ji (the first imperceptible beginning of movement), and (3) strategically exercise guanxi (interrealtion), mientze (face), and power. This harmony-oriented communication can also be understood in light of other Chinese cultural concepts such as mientze (face), guanxi (interrelation), yuan (destined relations), keqi (politeness), bao (reciprocity), feng shui, and zhan bu (divination). Chen then moves on to paint a picture of the second face, which is the dark side of Chinese communication, that appears when harmony cannot be upheld." (Page 273)
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"Although it is often viewed negatively in the West, silence is interpreted as a sign of interpersonal sensitivity, mutual respect, a sens of personal dignity, affirmation, and wisdom in the cultural context of India. At the individual level, silence serves as the means for the individual soul to ac
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hieve union with the universal spirit in the Hindu practice of yoga. At the interpersonal level, silence is used in Indian social interactions to maintain harmony, avoid conflict, and exert punishment. At the public level, as manifested in the Gandhian movement of satyagraha, self-restraint, patience, and protest against social and political injustice are communicated in silence and particularly significant in the civic sphere of Indian life. Jain and Matukumalli urge communication scholars and students to recognize and realize the value of silence and its full potential in intracultural and intercultural interactions." (Abstract)
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"The goal of this special issue is to revisit the terms of the debate about the "de-westernization" of communication studies and related issues such as the globalization, internationalization, cosmopolitanism, and indigenization of academic knowledge." (Abstract)
"In the late 1990s and 2000s, a number of calls were made by scholars to "internationalize" or "dewesternize" the field of media and communication studies. I argue that these approaches have indirectly silenced a much longer disciplinary history outside "the West" that has not only produced empirica
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l knowledge but has also actively challenged Western epistemologies. This article seeks to reinscribe the epistemological and historical foundations of media and communication studies in Africa. By framing the research of African media and communication scholars within the changing nature of knowledge production, shifting power relations between African nations, and the evolving role of African universities, I demonstrate how academic knowledge production is frequently driven and constrained by particular dominant social, political, and economic interests." (Abstract)
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"This is the first collection to de-Westernize the scholarship on women, politics and media by: 1) highlighting the latest research on countries and regions that have not been ‘the usual suspects’; 2) featuring a diverse group of scholars, many of non-Western origin; 3) giving voice through pers
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onal interviews to politically active women, thus providing the reader with a rare insight into women's agency in the political structures of emerging democracies. Each chapter examines the complex women, politics and media dynamic in a particular nation-state, taking into consideration the specific political, historic and social context. With 23 case studies and interviews from Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Russia and the former Soviet republics, this volume will be of interest to students, media scholars and policy makers from developed and emerging democracies." (Publisher description)
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"Este libro demuestra cómo desde su cosmovisión —que entiende la espléndida existencia en la armonía de los hombres consigo mismos, en sociedad y con la naturaleza—, el suma qamaña/sumak kausay es una propuesta profundamente comunicacional sustentada en valores y prácticas comunitarias com
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o la reciprocidad y la complementariedad. Sentipensamientos pone al dia las teorias de la comunicación para el desarrollo, y propone un marco conceptual y metodológico para construir críticamente el vivir bien, en la certeza de que no es un paradigma para recitario doctrinariamente, sino para realizarlo en la vida diaria sentisabiendo escuchar con los cinco sentidos, sentisabiendo expresarse con el corazón y la razón al mismo tiempo, y sentisabiendo compartir solidariamente para convivir en comunidad." (Contratapa)
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"In this chapter, Maulana Karenga explores ancient and ongoing African traditions of communicative practice in understanding African American rhetoric. For Karenga, African rhetoric is essentially the communicative practice that is oriented to building community and bringing good into the world, whi
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ch is in stark contrast to the utilitarian inclination of contemporary Western rhetoric that accentuates persuasiveness without sufficient consideration of the ethical dimension. From a Kawaida vantage point, he argues that African rhetoric is a rhetoric of community, resistance, reaffirmation, and possibility." (Page 211)
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"In this chaper, Hamid Mowlana elucidates four cardinal concepts of the Islamic worldview that may serve as the fundamental principles of ethical communication in Muslim societies: (1) tawhid (unity, coherence, and harmony of all in the universe), (2) amr bi al-ma'ruf wa nahy'an al munkar (commandin
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g to the right and prohibiting from the wrong), (3) ummah (community), and (4) taqwa (piety). It is his thesis that, in contrast to the ethical foundation of the modern West with its emphasis on the secular, ethics in the Islamic world are predicated on the inseparability of the religious and the social. Throughout Islamic history, he asseverates, information has been not a commodity but a moral imperative." (Page 237)
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"It is argued that to identify an Indian theory of communication Rasa and Dhvani experience must be studied in multimedia and multicultural contexts of the contemporary media universe and that such a theory shall emerge better from an in depth study of Indian folk media. The study explores the world
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within which the Haridasi Kirtankar sees himself/herself performing because the media universe within which traditional folk artists are performing and presenting their art has changed dramatically over the past two decades." (Abstract)
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"Cinema and Development in West Africa shows how the film industry in Francophone West African countries played an important role in executing strategies of nation building during the transition from French rule to the early postcolonial period. James E. Genova sees the construction of African ident
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ities and economic development as the major themes in the political literature and cultural production of the time. Focusing on film both as industry and aesthetic genre, he demonstrates its unique place in economic development and provides a comprehensive history of filmmaking in the region during the transition from colonies to sovereign states." (Publisher description)
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"This article critically explores the shortcomings of the West-centric theory of singular modernity. By focusing on the modern transformation of mass communication in Muslim countries, it argues that both traditional means of mass communication, such as manbars, and modern media, such as newspapers
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and tape recorders, have been used effectively for mobilization of masses by revolutionary Muslim groups. It also argues that Islam is not incompatible with modernity or democracy, and that Islamic groups have been an integral part of modern democratic developments in Muslim countries." (Abstract)
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