Page 86 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

Interventionist Tendencies in Popular Culture 61

established modes of organization, one realizes that the means and
mode of communication provide a framework of possibilities and par-
ameters within which political processes operate. Thus, perspectives
on alternative communication must focus equally on the political and
economic arenas that contextualize non-dominant communication,
that is, the related functions to which they are applied, the modes of
representation it enables and the manner in which these are socially
organized. In their efforts at challenging the material and symbolic basis
of institutionalized systems of dominance, contemporary social move-
ments are said to be redefining and widening the nature and scope of
political processes. These changes in their articulation of the ‘political’
5
reflect in their mode of communication: practices consisting of a
selection, modification and/or opposition to dominant communication.
Communication processes associated with social movements in India
have moved away from relying entirely on the dominant (mass) media;
in the process they have often succeeded in creating distinct ways in
which communication processes are socially organized, going well
beyond traditions of the agitprop (Sanghvai 1997). Since social move-
ments take place at the ‘intersection of culture, practice (both collect-
ive and everyday) and politics’, they equally reflect efforts at creating
alternative frameworks of meaning (Escobar 1992: 396). In many ways,
therefore, at the heart of anti-systemic movements in general is the
issue of representation, which directly relates to information, com-
munication and cultural practice. This explains cultural innovations
in movements concerning folk songs, painting and puppetry in their
campaigns, as also trace unions building further on their rich history
of street theatre. One may add that the evolution of such alternative
6
modes of communication and representation is not only endogen-
ous to a movement, but is equally realized between various modes of
organization, be they autonomous groups, coalition groups or unions,
towards common strategic orientations.
Like the varied processes that constitute anti-systemic politics in
general, instances of critical media interventions can be found in the
‘cracks’ within or on the margins of the culture industry. Illustrative
of this are a handful of news agencies, journals and publishing houses
operating within the dominant sphere and, despite the economic
constraints of the media industry (Butalia 1993). It has indeed been
difficult to strike a balance between the need for affirmative voices
from within the mass media to strengthen the politics of recognition