Linje Manyozo is a Senior Lecturer in Communication for Development, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Australia. He is also an Honorary Research Associate of the Department of Development Studies, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, South Africa.
Development theory and practice are often taught in a manner that strips them of their historical context and obscures alternative intellectual assumptions and critical frameworks. This prevents students from acquiring a holistic understanding of the world and consequently, when it comes to development practice, most lack the skills to live and engage with people. It has become crucial to properly consider what it means to conceive and implement participatory development out in the field and not just in the boardroom.
Building on the work of Robert Chambers and Arturo Escobar, Communicating Development with Communities is an empirically grounded critical reflection on how the development industry defines, imagines and constructs development at the implementation level. Unpacking the dominant syntax in the theory and practice of development, the book advocates a move towards relational and indigenous models of living that celebrate local ontologies, spirituality, economies of solidarity and community-ness. It investigates how subaltern voices are produced and appropriated, and how well-meaning experts can easily become oppressors. The book propounds a pedagogy of listening as a pathway that offers a space for interest groups to collaboratively curate meaningful development with and alongside communities.
This is a valuable resource for academics and practitioners in the fields of Development Studies, Communication for Development, Communication for Social Change, Social Anthropology, Economic Development and Public Policy.
Foreword by Robin Mansell.
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- Whereas many books focus on theory, this book focuses on development in practice and how it is implemented on the ground level.
- Explores a variety of different forms of communication, from traditional dialogic community engagement, through to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Weibo.
- The author combines experience in academia with experience of living in poverty, and of working with several development organisations, such as UNICEF, DFID and USAID.
Foreword Robin Mansell
Part I: Deconstruction
Chapter 1 Spectacle of Development
Chapter 2 Language of Oppression
Part II: Reconstruction
Chapter 3 Capturing Subaltern Voices
Chapter 4 Living with People
Chapter 5 Encountering Poverty
Chapter 6 Pedagogy of Listening
Communicating Development with Communities aims to take students, researchers and development professionals away from the theory of the classroom or policy-making boardroom and out into the community. Building on the work of Robert Chambers and Arturo Escobar, the book is an empirically grounded critical reflection on how the development industry defines, imagines and constructs development at the implementation level. Communicating Development With Communities is written for students, scholars and practitioners in participatory development, to prepare them for the complexities and challenges that await them when it comes to working with marginalised people in both the north and the south.
"Linje Manyozo has a very special talent. He achieves an insightful blending of the personal and the political, drawing upon a wide range of critical traditions in academic research and upon his own life experience. Alternative development pathways may be borne through speaking development with and alongside communities. For him, this is the route through which the subaltern perspective can be acquired and in a way that informs action. Manyozo´s proposals for theory and practice offer a pathway for a journey which, through experimentation, can create opportunities for deliberative development at the community level." – Robin Mansell, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
"Linje Manyozo is one of the most exciting scholars writing in the field of media, communication and development today. He combines academic rigour and insights, his experience of working as a communication for development practitioner, and his own personal trajectory, to provide a searing contemporary critique of the field and its problems and possibilities. This book is a wonderfully colourful account of the importance of speaking, listening and deliberative development." – Jo Tacchi, Institute for Media and Creative Industries, Loughborough University in London, UK
"Linje Manyozo is back in academia after years in development practice, and with his most important book to date. This is a very well written, strong critique of development theory and practice. It is a thorough deconstruction of the spectacle of development, and a solid suggestion for a reconstruction of deliberative development. Provocative in his style, thoughtful in essence and novel in his perspectives, Manyozo´s voice is fundamental." – Thomas Tufte, Department of Media and Communication, Leicester University, UK
"Linje Manyozo brings to the fore refreshing analysis on one of the silent issues in development lexicon. Communicating Development with Communities is a truly timely contribution to fundamental principles of development practice. This is a call for the balance of power and respect for those on the "receiving" end of development." – Jonathan Makuwira, Department of Development Studies, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, South Africa
