Page 16 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

Introduction xv

dual societies’ on account in particular of ‘anthropological blindness’
(Casteigts 2002). The report underscored, as a result, the cultural
fracture prevailing between the administration and the population.
It geographically traced and historically dated the model as being a
deliberate will to impose as universally valid a model designed by the
‘liberal Europe of the industrial revolution and the twentieth century
America’. Born in a particular era and historical context, the model
was consequently unfit for being transferred to other geographical
and historical contexts. The report denounced as a blunder the will to
impose it as a reference for evaluation of economic policies to the
whole planet. It argued that this actually amounts ‘to enforce[ing] a
self-alienation’, which results in ‘the concerned states being forced, in
good faith, to sacrifice the genuine interests of their local populations
in the name of an economic rationality believed to be a scientific
model of development’ (ibid.: 13–16).
There is, consequently, nothing surprising about the fact that a wide
number of so-called Social Development Consulting Pvt. Ltd agencies
authoritatively—that is, on the strength of an alleged modern science
of business management systems—try to shape voluntary social ac-
tion into a social commodity for institutions of social work, and appre-
ciate its value with parameters learnt from management experts. Social
consultants set themselves up as petty world development economists.
In their discourse, human agency becomes a matter of social engineer-
ing, people’s cooperation an affair of scientific techniques, development
a part of trade organization, expert use of modern mass media a modern
name for active democracy, and justice a checklist for administratively
correct procedures. In short, communication has found its location as
a component of management system science.
This is how neo-liberal globalization protects its ideology of self-
achievement, competition and domination by concealing it behind the
shabby images of a consumer-friendly market allegedly driving human-
kind to a new era of affluence (Stiglitz 2002). It eliminates the ‘political’
by replacing democratic decision making with the universal rules of
management dictated by non-elected bodies such as the World Trade
Organization and social consultancy agencies. It further eliminates
the ‘cultural’ by reducing it to marketable objects travelling through the
modern communication channels. From this viewpoint, communica-
tion is merely a technical issue of manageable complexity.