Thursday, March 8, 2007
3–5 p.m.
Location: Humanities & Social Sciences Building 1500
Parking Information
Category: Lecture
Description: Paula Chakravartty
Civil Society, Development and the Postcolonial State
This paper attempts to locate the current role of civil society organizations in opposition to the state in the longer, contradictory history of communications and development. She will examine the social terrain behind the institutions of policy-making in the postcolonial context, as an attempt at a theoretical intervention in the literature on communication and development in the era of global governance. Instead, and in contrast to both the dominant and often the critical discourse on the digital divide, she argues that we must recognize that the relationship between the state and civil society has a specific history and politics in the South. Moreover, she suggests that the model for both transnational and national civil society actors in multilateral arenas are primarily based on Northern models of the very specific history of what we understand as associational life, that cannot simply be undone by reifying local communities and organizations in contrast to the global. The discussion will help elaborate these arguments as we consider the historically distinctive place of civil society in relation to ICTs, development and the reconfigured nation state.
Paula Chakravartty is Assistant Professor of Communication and Faculty Associate at the Center for Public Policy and Administration and Affiliated Faculty at the Labor Center and Women's Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her teaching and research cover news media as well as telecommunication and information and communication technologies, science and technology studies, postcolonial and feminist political theory and political economy, with a focus on India, Brazil and the US. Her current research examines theories of governance, social movements and global media policy, gender and labor in emerging information economies, and the globalization of economic news. Her articles have been published in Media Culture & Society, Emergences, Television & New Media, Asian American Policy Index, Economic and Political Weekly, and Social Semiotics. She has published eight chapters in edited volumes covering, among other areas, new approaches to international communications, communications and public interest, labor and globalization, and political culture in South Asia. She is the co-author of Globalization, Communication and Media Policy: A Critical Perspective (Edinburgh University Press and Columbia University Press, 2006)with Katharine Sarikakis) and co-editor of Political Economy of Global Communication: Towards a Transcultural Perspective (Rowan & Littlefield, 2007) with Yuezhi Zhao).
This event is sponsored by the Center for Ideas and Society and Film and Visual Culture.
Open to: General Public
Admission: Free
Sponsor: Center for Ideas & Society
Contact Information:
Laura Lozon
951-827-4332
laura.lozon@ucr.edu