Communication as Complement

Abstract

The P7acticaZ G a p by Robert E. JacobsonThe theoretical and practical gap between the "new" field of communication development and the "traditional" field of nationaldevelopment planning becomes more apparent all the time. RobertHornik's article in the Spring 1980 issue of the Jmmal, "Communication as Complement to Development," is further confirmation of this yawning chasm.Hornik's piece is presented as a survey summarizing the lessons of communication-development experiences over the last two decades: it is a prescription for action that culminates one of the most ambitious research projects sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID). Yet, for all the prestigious names contributing to this report, it suffers mightily from the flimsiness of its theoretical "foundation" and a pervasive relativism that is both ahlstorical and naive.Development planners-the traditional type-may not agree on particular ideologies, epistemologies, and methodologies but they do share a conviction that there are themes along these lines that must be explicated if any planning approach is to succeed (1). The near-catastrophic and actually catastrophic consequences of too many planning projects is forcing ideological, epistemological, and methodological topics onto the planners' agenda (3, 4). None of these concerns are reflected in Hornik's discourse. 1 attribute this to a disciplinary insularity sustained by communication developers' overreliance on antedated and inadequate theories put forward decades ago.The communication developers are engaged in the reinvention of the wheel, but this wheel has four sides.The second problem with the Hornik article, in addition to its toolimited acquaintance with the voluminous literature of development planning, is its stolid relativism. Unfortunately, this problem cannot be solved by merely referring the reader to a larger corpus of work.Drawing on the outcomes of interesting but narrowly drawn experiments with the use of mass media for social mobilization, Homik and his colleagues suggest numerous rules for future applications of these media. Their approach, however, is removed, distant, abstract.The central problematic is typically vague: "Success of any communication intervention is improbable without prior commUment to social change in the sector by substantial political forces" (p. 17, emphasis in original). This is the cornerstone of the AID and Hornik d ol. approach to development, but where are the definitions required to make sense of it?.What is a "substantial political force?" (One thinks unavoidably of past and present petty dictators, representing callous oligopolies, in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, because it is difficult to conceive of the elitist AID working with other, more popular and possibly radical peasant-worker movements.)Robert E. Jacobson is in the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. years (6, 9).Hornik really does not deserve the full force of these criticisms: conditions imposed by AID on its r...

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