Communicating Social Change by Dutta Mohan J

Author:Dutta, Mohan J.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Humanities
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2011-03-28T16:00:00+00:00

Discursive Ruptures

In the culture-centered approach, dialogue is both an epistemological tool and a strategic marker of praxis. In other words, it is through dialogue that discourses are challenged, with opposing points of view being introduced into the discursive space. Resistance to globalization processes is fundamentally carried out through the articulation of alternative discourses embedded in alternative rationalities which question the individualistic, profit-driven logic of globalization that continuously seeks to take over the local discursive spaces across the globe. Possibilities of social change are primarily constituted over the ownership and construction of discursive spaces. Central to the change in dominant social structures is the articulation of discourse that challenges the existing ways of thinking, ruptures the taken-for-granted assumptions that constitute the seamless spaces of dominant public spheres, and entices the listener, viewer, or reader to consider alternative possibilities. This discursive shift lies at the heart of globally situated forms of resistance in local communities that seek to bring about shifts in structures of inequality and injustice.

Let us consider the example of China and the articulation of peasant resistance as a disruption of the hegemonic narrative of neoliberalism within which the images of China are constituted in contemporary global discourses. Since 1999, China has entered into the political economic spaces of globalization, played out in the form of economic reforms directed at modernizing China, restoring China’s global citizenship, attaining possible world power status, and liberalizing the society. The narratives of Reform constituted in the global discursive spaces of and about China have celebrated the economic growth of the nation state, the substantial growth of a viable middle class whose values and lifestyles are increasingly congruent with Western modes of modern life, and the emergence of China into modernity. This economic story that predominates much of the discursive space is, however, accompanied by an equally absent narrative of the increasing polarization of Chinese society, with increasing deterioration and disenfranchisement in the rural sectors (Tiejun, 2001). Tiejun (2001) discusses the increasing presence of san-nong, “the three rural dimensions,” referring to the emerging problems related to the rural population (peasants), rural production (agriculture), and the rural world (countryside).

It is against this backdrop of the hegemonic discourses of China that alternative rationalities are imagined through dialogic co-participation with rural communities. One such alternative discursive entry point is reflected in the work of the James Yen Institute for Rural Reconstruction (www.iirr.org/), focused on the tasks of training farmers and other learners in rural communities, and creating dialogic spaces for the voicing of alternative logics driven by relational harmony among people and with nature. The communicative construction of alternative discourses that challenge the hegemony of neoliberalism is complemented by structurally driven efforts of social change that seek to build capacities in rural communities such that farmers and rural residents can have a say in the stories of development that shape their lives. The basic commitment of the Institute is in reviving the traditions of the past in rural communities and enabling local communities to participate in self-management and

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