Communicating Social Change: Structure, Culture, and Agency

Communicating social change: Structure, culture, and agency explores the use of communication to transform global, national and local structures of power that create and sustain oppressive conditions. It describes the social challenges that exist in current globalization politics, and examines the communicative processes, strategies and tactics through which social change interventions are constituted in response to the challenges. Using empirical evidence and case studies, each section of the volume documents the ways through which those in power create conditions at the margins, and provides a theoretical base for discussing the ways in which these positions of power are resisted through communication processes, strategies and tactics. The interplay of power and control with resistance is weaved in through each of the chapters in the book.Section 1 focuses on discussing the key social challenges in the agriculture, education, gender, health, housing and poverty sectors. Section 2 builds on the discussions of the social challenges to articulate the ways in which communication serves as an entry point for transforming the social structures that sustain inequities. The chapters in the two sections are concluded by discussions about the pragmatic implications of social change theories in communication.