'Media and the
Politics of Transformative Social Movements'
Edited by Sasanka Perera
South Asian University, New Delhi
South Asian University, New Delhi
Introduction
and approach:
The
proposed volume, Media and the Politics of
Transformative Social Movements is located within the overall scope of Routledge’s
(New Delhi) series on Social Movements, and
Transformative Dissent. The overall focus of the series
is available in ‘Series Concept Note’ attached at the end of this note.
It should be axiomatic that the
politics of transformative social movements can no longer be explored using the
tools of research and interpretation inherited from conventional social sciences.
In a sense, even the research objects in this area have to be reconfigured and
re-imagined in the context of more recent transformations in both politics and
technology. Unfortunately, these fundamental considerations have not been seriously
explored in the collective enterprise of South Asian social sciences. The
expansion of the political role of conventional mass media into social media
was a phenomenon that was very clear from almost the beginning of the Arab
Spring. Similarly, the public radio network in Nepal played a crucial role in
the country’s anti-monarchy and pro-democracy politics while the Indian
government has actively explored possibility of controlling social media
post-Arab Spring. Unconfirmed reports claim that the Sri Lankan government has
sort Chinese help to monitor and control Face Book while the government of
Pakistan banned You Tube in 2012. Active dissent in many
countries in the region, which includes India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and the
Maldives in particular have entered the internet in a big way as a relatively
safe and widely accessible domain of politics. In this context, it is necessary to explore not
only the pivotal role media plays in the success or relative failure of
transformative social movements but also how it might determine the inner
dynamics of media behavior itself.
In the present context, ‘media’ is not only understood in the
sense of conventional mass media, but also includes newly emergent and more
accessible and cheap technologies such as social media. Media taken in this
broader sense frame movements in the public domain and is in turn framed by it.
As in the past, today in the process of influencing the shape, structure, and
reception of transformative movements, media is undergoing massive structural
and systemic changes. For instance, alongside print media one can also see the
rise of grassroots media such as Information and Communication Technologies
(ICTs), community radio and TV stations, social-media (Twitter, Facebook) and
blogging. These have not only created opportunities for mobilization, but have
also led to the making of social movements, sometimes almost exclusively in the
internet. Rather than social movements defined by ground conditions, these can
become literally virtual movements not necessarily defined by concrete
situations. Nevertheless, these digital networks often have the advantage of
being non-hierarchical, international, decentralized, placeless, and timeless
in their organization, knowledge production and reach. These have been able to
stay out of the reach of censors and have provided an outlet for voices that
are otherwise silenced. On the other hand, the clutter of such voices on the
internet gives social movements a wide reach, even though that reach itself
might lead to a seeming exaggeration of their influence. Also, in the region,
we are yet to pose the question as to what extent the growth of private capital
and the resultant expansion of privately owned media has colonized the public
sphere and its ability to offer space for transformative politics.
In this overall context, it is important to take stock of the
changing relationships between social movements and the multiple manifestations
of media within the shrinking public sphere. What exactly do concepts such as
‘alternative’ media mean today, which in fundamental ways questions and
contests the once dearly held assumptions and hegemony of media conglomerates
and cartels that remain concentrated in the hands of a few? But does this
alternativeness’ still remain a viable alternative simply because the control
of media in general has moved significantly from the state to the private
sector? To what extent has the progressive and leftist movements around the
world optimized the use of this bottom-up, digital network and social media
interfaces to subvert the hegemonies in favor of democratization? Is this more
hype than real when situated in evolving ground conditions?
Possible thematic considerations:
Some basic questions that emerge for discussion can be outlined as
follows:
How have social movements made use of print and electronic as well
as social media? Has the expansion of mobile phone usage in this context
changed the dimensions and dynamics of social movements? How have media
reported on social movements and in what way, if at all, has the role of
journalists or media personnel changed in this context? Within media, what are
the transformations (in markets, practice, values, systems, production,
reception and audiences) presently taking place that will influence the way
social movements are reported in future? What role has media played in
provoking and fueling social movements? In what ways have the public sphere
shrunk with the advent of private capital into media business which impacts the
public sphere, and what are the resultant impacts of this situation on social
movements’ ability to ‘perform’ transformations? How democratic has
media become in the course of responding to transformative social movements? Can the shift from conventional media
to social media be described a ‘social movement’ within media? How has digital
technology transformed the 'critical' role of the media? In this
context, is it possible that print media is being marginalized with the
expansion of electronic and digital media, particularly with reference to
vernacular languages, and what are its implications? What
is the nature of social stratification within media, and what are the
dissenting voices? Is the classification of conventional media and new social
media analytically viable? Since media has become very capital intensive,
would this compromise the freedom of the media? Finally, what does the
differential capital investment in new technologies in media mean in terms of
creating space for alternate possibilities of expression as well as in creating
new hierarchies in the media landscape?
Essays that reflect on but are not limited to these issues from
across regional, cultural and national contexts, offering a multiplicity of
viewpoints, are particularly welcome for this volume. The general focus of the
volume would be on South Asia.
Deadlines and submission details:
Abstracts no longer than 500
words can be submitted in MS Word format as email attachments.
Manuscript guidelines will be provided later to the authors of approved
abstracts.
The deadline for the receipt of abstracts
is 30th June 2014. Authors of selected abstracts will be
informed by 15th August 2014.
Details on submission deadlines
for essays, stylistic matters and other details will be communicated later to
writers whose abstracts have been accepted. Approximately however, writers will
get a period of four months to submit the essays from the date of communicating
acceptance of abstract.
All queries and submissions
should be sent to the following email address: sasankaperera@soc.sau.ac.in
Series Concept Note
Social Movements and Transformative Dissent
Series Editors: Savyasaachi and
Ravi Kumar
Publisher: Routledge, New Delhi
This series attempts to
create space for reflection on the variety of ways the post 1989 polity and
society are being shaped by questioning ‘the modernity’ across all levels of
social life ranging from the everyday to the national to the global.
The character of the
state has been transforming. It is becoming an instrument that promotes and
replicates private capital. It is expanding, opening channels for private
capital to take over civil society spaces and handing over the ‘public’ to the
‘private’. Contradictions and unresolved questions have proliferated;
injustices have been undermining the material foundations of civility between
human being and nature. The sites of contestation are omnipresent and
sharpening – in relations between individual as well as in diverse forms of
social, economic, political, and cultural relations.
The expansionist
tendency of the state has led to the shrinking of spaces for difference and
critical thinking. While it is being argued that it has facilitated the growth
of the middle class, it has also annihilated plural ways of life and deepened
class inequalities. On account of all this stresses of life are being
attenuated and the life support systems are becoming vulnerable.
At the same time, the
energy and visions generated by mass movements have been gradually percolating
to the society and polity outside the consumer world of the middle class. It is
relevant to recall here that the nature, form and content of movements that
give expression to discontent have also undergone radical change. They have
provided multiple spaces for peoples’ suffering to be expressed in the form of
vibrant dissent and resistance. In doing
so, they have mobilised sections of the media, civil society network campaigns,
legal and judicial activism, civil disobedience, non-party political processes,
carnivals, humour, laughter, performance and demonstrations etc to harness the
creativity of marginalised people, and have brought them to the ‘front line’.
Modes of questioning,
protest and dissent have been changing to open-up places and spaces for
debates, discussions and political mobilisations. Most significant is that the
intentions of the State and its claim that it is an embodiment of popular
aspirations are being questioned.
This series is an
attempt to reflect on these transformations. It explores if this is a matter of
initiating a paradigm shift in the praxis of our modes of being in the world,
and by doing so it will present ongoing debates, life and works of organic
thinkers associated with progressive social movements, narratives of dissent,
resistance and political mobilisations, significance of new media, and a
comparative perspective from the global south.
The first volume in the
series edited by Savyasaachi and Ravi Kumar is now available
under the title, Social Movements:
Transformative Shifts and Turning Points. The details can be accessed via the following link: http://www.tandfindia.com/books/details/9780415717366/
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