Abstract
A central tenet of communication for development/social change as a field of study, a practice and an institutional project, is that strategic communicative interventions in human affairs play a role in tackling social problems. The academic field has studied the practice in search of tangible results, but paid scant attention to the institutional project within which it takes place. That the practice is vanishing as a clear-cut institutional approach within most multinational, bilateral and non-profit organizations remains an unattended fact. To address it, I propose the notion of disappearance, that is, the process by which the strategic, systematic use of mediated communication to advance global justice in ethically sound and participatory ways is being discontinued within organizations. I unpack the notion of disappearance as observable fact, conceptual lens and path dependence.
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Notes
- 1.
There are continuities and discontinuities, as well as similarities and differences, in existing conceptualizations of communication for development and communication for social change (see Enghel 2013, 2014; Wilkins 2009 for discussions). For the purpose of this book chapter, I am more interested in their continuities and similarities than their discontinuities and differences, and therefore consider them jointly.
- 2.
I am grateful to Pradip Thomas and Karin Wilkins for their thoughtful input on a draft version of this text, which informed my thinking at a crucial point in the writing process.
- 3.
This may be because certain institutional processes are hidden from view as they unfold, and/or not discussed publicly once they become evident.
- 4.
Direct quote retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20041010121807/http://www.worldbank.org/developmentcommunications/ (Accessed January 29, 2019).
- 5.
The fact that the WB’s DevComm Division makes for a contentious example of the materialization of communication for development/social change as institutional project allows me to clarify that taking into account its disappearance as an observable fact is not necessarily akin to regretting its demise. Neither sympathy nor disapproval vis-à-vis a given object of study should guide scholarly decisions about what merits investigation.
- 6.
See https://web.archive.org/web/20041011024923/http://www.worldbank.org/developmentcommunications/who%20we%20are/who2nlevel.htm (Accessed January 29, 2019).
- 7.
Partly because I had participated as a junior researcher in the WCCD in 2006, and partly for teaching purposes, I monitored DevComm’s activities over the years, and thus noticed this shift.
- 8.
Retrieved from http://panoslondon.panosnetwork.org/our-work/ (Accessed January 29, 2019).
- 9.
See http://panoslondon.panosnetwork.org/2012/12/20/tributes-to-panos-london/ (Accessed January 30, 2019).
- 10.
There are of course exceptions. I discuss some of them in the next section of this chapter. For a very recent example, see elements of the study by Scott, Wright and Bunce (2018) on the state of humanitarian journalism.
- 11.
In 2006, FAO’s Communication for Development Group was located in the Research and Extension Unit within the Natural Resources and Environment Department (World Bank 2007, p. xxiv). According to Gumucio-Dagron (2007), “immediately after the WCCD, FAO bureaucrats decided to make the Communication for Development Unit, which had already been downgraded since 1995, ‘disappear’”.
- 12.
The CI’s stated mission is to “convene the communication and media development, social and behavioural change community for more effective local, national, and international development action”. See http://www.comminit.com/global/category/sites/global (Accessed January 30, 2019).
- 13.
See https://www.lifegate.com/businesses/team/lucia-grenna (Accessed April 17, 2020).
- 14.
Chaired by Jan Servaes.
- 15.
See World Bank (2007, p. 209) for a list of members of the Scientific Committee (pages xxi–xxiii) and of authors of the background study. The reference to the review and editing process is not where the authors are listed, but on page 8, note 1.
- 16.
- 17.
In hindsight, this may have been the case with DevComm and the WCCD.
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Enghel, F. (2020). Disappearance. In: Tacchi, J., Tufte, T. (eds) Communicating for Change. Palgrave Studies in Communication for Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42513-5_15
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