Denial and distancing in discourses of development: shadow of the 'Third World' in New Zealand

Anxieties about development in New Zealand show up in a deep-rooted fear of the 'Third World' in the country. We examine how the term 'Third World' is deployed in media discourses in economic, social and environmental contexts and how this deployment results in a 'discursive distancing' from anything associated with the 'Third World'. Such distancing demonstrates a fragile national identity that struggles with the contradictions between the nation's desire to be part of the 'First World' of global capitalism and the growing disparities in health and wealth within it. The shadow of the 'Third World' prevents New Zealand from confronting the realities of its own inequities, which in turn comes in the way of a sound development agenda

Transparency as a product of processes of power and liquid modernity: a conceptual paper.

High-profile revelations of organizational malpractices in the last few years such as unethical business deals based on large-scale conflicts of interest, insider trading, overvaluation of housing mortgages, doctored inventories of inadequate capital holdings to raise finances, and manipulation of facts and figures have made transparency an important value in today’s organizational world. Stakeholders, whether internal or external, expect to have access to information and organizations have little choice but to open up in keeping with current trends (Christensen, 2002; Christensen & Langer, 2009). This paper offers a tentative examination of what we believe to be an original conceptual framework for a critical understanding of processes of and motivations for organizational transparency, including its paradoxes, by drawing on and combining theories of power, hegemony, legitimacy, and liquid modernity

A Map of the Nanoworld: Sizing up the Science, Politics, and Business of the Infinitesimal

Mapping out the eight main nodes of nanotechnology discourse that have emerged in the past decade, we explore how various scientific, social, and ethical islands of discussion have developed, been recognized, and are being continually renegotiated. We do so by (1) identifying the ways in which scientists, policy makers, entrepreneurs, educators, and environmental groups have drawn boundaries on issues relating to nanotechnology; (2) describing concisely the perspectives from which these boundaries are drawn; and (3) exploring how boundaries on nanotechnology are marked and negotiated by various nodes of nanotechnology discourse.Comment: 25 page

The business of the other: representing the non-west in management and media

This thesis explores current facets of the business of the other in western management and business media discourses. It identifies the shaping of these facets through continuities between imperial colonisation and contemporary neocolonialism in ways that mainstream management discourses marginalise or ignore. In establishing marginalisation and neglect, and opening up some of the consequences, the thesis draws on conceptual frameworks from indigenous, feminist, postcolonial, and subaltern studies. In addition, it argues that this ongoing incorporation of colonial concepts and practices into contemporary neocolonialism not only needs to be acknowledged but needs to be challenged by the reconceptualisation of current approaches to the other across a number of business fields. After analysing the process of othering in the mainstream media through a study of the New Zealand press, the thesis focuses its four main lines of inquiry on the fields of business journalism, public relations, diversity management, and intercultural communication. In particular, it looks at aspects of western control involved in the ‘globalisation’ campaigns of the western media; the theoretical formulation of ‘requisite variety’ in public relations; the rhetoric of ‘managing diversity’ in organisations; and the formulation of ‘intercultural communication’ in education. For the first line of inquiry, the thesis analyses how western business journalism texts exercise control over the other by updating Orientalist or Eurocentric ideologies as a discursive underpinning of, and accompaniment to, neocolonial economic expansion. Its second inquiry leads to a critique of the outwardly egalitarian concept of requisite variety in public relations literature. The thesis finds that, although this concept has allowed public relations to take note of the cultural other, it has, in a largely ethnocentric field, done little to shift the balance of power away from dominant western elites. Instead, it shows how the field operates to support those who already hold privileged positions and keep those on the margin marginalised. In the third and fourth lines of inquiry, into discourses of diversity management and intercultural communication, similar consolidations of western neocolonial power are evident. While acknowledging attempts by these fields to incorporate the other into the larger organisational frame, the thesis tracks a systematic tendency to avoid or sideline issues of socio-political power in representations of diversity. It further contends that these benign-looking discourses of diversity align with the neocolonial west’s strategies to retain power in a world where major demographic shifts are reducing western populations to a numerical minority. The thesis also attempts, by introducing my lived experience as an other, to synthesise subjective observations with academic analysis. This integration of lived experience with the legitimacy of theory has been crucial to the project of the thesis as a whole. That project aims to resist sites of control entrenched in western worldviews and, in the face of persistent denials that they exist, to acknowledge racism and other potent discursive and material traces of imperialism

Envisioning communication from the edge

In mapping movements on the edge, we explore how scholars redefine the boundaries of what constitutes research and practice. In The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits, a book that already promises to be one of the seminal business books of the 21 st century, C. K. Prahalad (2004) recounts his difficulties in finding a journal to publish the research that informed his book. Thanks to his earlier success with a prizewinning bestseller on more conventional business strategy, Competing for the Future (Hamel & Prahalad, 1994), Prahalad went on to find a book publisher despite the academic journal rejections. His efforts, we would argue, were powered by his Asian origins and his desire to apply his business knowledge to make a positive difference to people disempowered by living at the bottom of the economic pyramid

Editorial: Understanding ‘Race’ in/and public relations: Where do we start and where should we go?

Our starting point for a broader discussion on ‘race’1 in=and public relations (PR) is that, despite its virtual invisibility in the scholarly literature, race is firmly embedded in the context and practice of PR. Although scholars are slowly beginning to engage with race (e.g., Edwards, 2010b; Pompper, 2005; 2010; Waymer, 2010), PR scholarship has not yet paid sufficient attention to the ‘raced’ nature of the field. The dominant, functional perspectives of PR concentrate primarily on organizational goals, apparently oblivious to the impact that such goals have in relation to issues of race. On the other hand, critical approaches look at PR as a social and cultural phenomenon but these too, by and large, bypass race as an inherent part of the social and cultural domain

Terms of empowerment: Gender, ecology, and ICTs for development

The obsession with technology as a primary tool for development without any regard for the social and cultural needs of society has not done much to help the cause of women or other disempowered groups. The accent on technology for technology’s sake is part of a masculinist worldview characterised by the tendency to equate technical competence with male gender identity (Judy Wajcman 1995). As a counter, a feminist approach to technology looks at ways of dealing with core life-sustaining issues of food, clothing, shelter, education, and a general sense of well being (Debashish Munshi and Priya Kurian 2003). Indeed, as Ingunn Moser (1995: 6) points out, science and technology are not only “social and cultural projects, formed in power structures and coloured by dominating values in the societies and the cultures in which they occur” but are political as well

Diverse voices and alternative rationalities: Imagining forms of postcolonial organizational communication

In his exploration of nationalism and imagined communities, Anderson (1991) claims that nations are “imagined” (that is, they are constructions), insomuch that people are convinced of the comradeship of unknown fellow compatriots, often ignoring any actual inequality and exploitation that exists in such an imagined community. In a similar fashion, we argue that the subdiscipline or community of organizational communication scholars is also imagined, as much organizational communication scholarship conducted within the global context is performed and interpreted from the dominant Euro-American intellectual tradition, privileging those concepts as well as particular voices and traditions and often ignoring inequality and exploitation within the scholarly community. This forgetting and the imagined scholarly community it creates continue to reify and legitimate a particular form of rationality and, in practice, lead to further colonization, subordination, and oppression of native/indigenous/other forms of understanding and organizing within our disciplinary field. So, how do we recover alternative rationalities, worldviews, and voices on the processes of organizing in diverse contexts

Denial and Distancing in Discourses of Development: shadow of the ‘Third World’ in New Zealand

Anxieties about development in New Zealand show up in a deep-rooted fear of the ‘Third World’ in the country. We examine how the term ‘Third World’ is deployed in media discourses in economic, social and environmental contexts and how this deployment results in a ‘discursive distancing’ from anything associated with the ‘Third World’. Such distancing demonstrates a fragile national identity that struggles with the contradictions between the nation's desire to be part of the ‘First World’ of global capitalism and the growing disparities in health and wealth within it. The shadow of the ‘Third World’ prevents New Zealand from confronting the realities of its own inequities, which in turn comes in the way of a sound development agenda

Imperializing spin cycles: A postcolonial look at public relations, greenwashing, and the separation of publics

This article draws on postcolonial theory to critique ongoing neocolonial aspects of public relations theory and practice and especially the field's recent appropriation of terms such as “corporate social responsibility” and “sustainable development.” It positions such appropriation as a continuation of the old colonial strategy of reputation management among elite publics at the expense of marginalized publics. The article makes the case that public relations can only begin to be ethical and socially responsible if it acknowledges the diversity of publics, breaks down the hierarchy of publics, and takes into account the resistance of peripheral publics