To de-westernize, yes, but with a critical edge: A response to Gunaratne and others

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To de-westernize, yes, but with a critical edge: A response to Gunaratne and

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To de-westernize, yes, but with a critical edge: A response to Gunaratne and others

Tapas RayDoon University, India

A section of scholars – Curran and Park (2000), Gunaratne (2009, 2010), Thussu (2009) and Yadava (1987, 1998) prominent among them – have written about the need to de-westernize communication and media studies for some years. In a recent issue of this journal (Media, Culture & Society 32(3), 2010) Gunaratne made a strong case for it, and advanced certain suggestions. My commentary seeks to contribute to the discus-sion by unpacking the notion of ‘de-westernization’ and proposing an approach that is, hopefully, consistent with its original impulse without falling into the very traps of essentialism and reification, which Western academia is viewed by Gunaratne and others as being guilty of.

A field of study consists of theories and research methodologies which, we may note, stand in a relationship of mutual dependence: theory limits the set of questions that can be asked for the purpose of research, and research in turn draws a dynamic, shifting boundary around what is to be theorized, while also leading to the progressive perfecting of existing theory. Research also produces facts by sheer chance that prove decisive in giving rise to new theories. However, as research cannot begin on a theoretical tabula rasa, one may say that de-westernization of media and communication research methods requires de-westernization of media and communication theory. However, in this com-mentary, theory, model and method will be mentioned without any special significance being attached to any of these – what is being referred to is the entire theory-method complex involved in knowledge production.

A prominent name among those who have advocated de-westernization of communi-cation theory and research is Gunaratne, who notes a centre–periphery structure in the social sciences, including communication. Quoting Alatas (2006), he identifies a centre consisting of three former imperial powers, namely the UK, France and the USA, and a

Corresponding author:Tapas Ray, School of Communication, Faculty Offices Building, Doon University, Mothrawala Road, Dehradun 248001, India. Email: [email protected], [email protected]

432414 MCS34210.1177/0163443711432414RayMedia, Culture & Society2012

Commentary




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second tier made up of Germany, Holland, Japan, Italy, etc. Academia and the publishing sector in the North, he writes, ‘determine the axiology, epistemology, and ontology relating to each of the social sciences through an elaborate system of peer-reviewing and adherence to [Western] norms’ (Gunaratne, 2009: 60).

As a way out of this domination, which is marked by the ‘continued prevalence of Orientalism and Eurocentrism’, Gunaratne (2010) urges non-Western scholars to read their classical literature afresh ‘to document non-Western contributions to the traditions of communication arts (i.e. rhetoric, semiotics, phenomenology and critical studies)’ and to become ‘active agents of change in the third wave of systems theory (within the communication science tradition of cybernetics) by metatheorizing and critiquing the axiological, epistemological and ontological dimensions of existing theories, both Western and non-Western’ (2010: 486).

It may be relevant to note that while calling for de-westernization, Gunaratne himself has spoken in Western scientific categories: the concepts of communication arts, rheto-ric, semiotics, phenomenology and critical studies all belong to the Western tradition, though at least some of these have their counterparts in other traditions. Their very ontologies – the assumptions they make about human beings and societies, as well as the manner in which they are demarcated as separate areas of knowledge from one another and from other areas – are Western in origin. Far from being a weakness, in my view, this is both natural and desirable. Natural, because Gunaratne is (presumably) trained in the Western tradition, and has been working within the institutional structure of Western/Northern academia. Desirable because, to speak in a different language would be to make himself incomprehensible to his audience, which like him is trained in the Western tradition and largely works either within the Western (i.e. Northern) institutional framework or elsewhere but within this paradigm.

However, the second part of Gunaratne’s advice – to embrace systems theory in the communication science tradition of cybernetics – merits some discussion. According to the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Audi, 1999: 898–9), systems theory is ‘the transdisciplinary study of the abstract organization of phenomena, independent of their substance, type, or spatial or temporal scale of existence’. This type of theory, the entry adds, ‘investigates both the principles common to all complex entities and the (usually mathematical) models that can be used to describe them’ (1999: 898). For systems the-ory, the focus of study is not the parts or elements of an entity (say, organs of a living body) but the arrangement of its parts and the relations among them. It is the specific nature of the organization that determines a given system, ‘which is independent of the concrete substance of the elements (e.g. particles, cells, transistors, people)’ (1999: 898).

The above, it may be argued, points towards a rather positivistic and deterministic epistemology. Indeed, as Montuori (2007) and others note, early systems theory has been criticized for its positivism. Although chaos and complexity theory has sought to correct this, and in the related field of cybernetics Foerster (1992) has introduced a theory of second-order cybernetics predicated on an observer whose subjectivity is part of the observed reality in a manner similar to interpretive social science, these theories remain ultimately within the positivist paradigm and, one may say, are still reductionist. As Morçöl notes:




240 Media, Culture & Society 34(2)

[C]haos and complexity theory recognizes the need for a modification of the reductionist classical model of science, but remains grounded in the scientific tradition.… Complexity theory renders the Newtonian notion of universal laws questionable, but it still offers generalizations about natural and social phenomena. (2001: 104)

These theories therefore can be said to conflict with the aim of de-westernization, as one of the main criticisms of Western social science advanced by non-Western scholars (including Gunaratne) is of positivism and reductionism.

Second, systems thinking may be said to reduce the human being to a cog in the wheel, devoid of agency. Habermas has characterized it as ‘methodological antihumanism’ as it ‘avoids looking at human beings as unique subjects engaging in private or intersubjective activities’ (Harter and Phillips, 2004). Further, Habermas feels that this strain of theory offers no vantage point outside of the system, from which the latter can be critiqued (Harter and Phillips, 2004). Although Foerster (1992), in his account of second-order cybernetics, claims that ethics expresses itself implicitly through the language used by participants in communication with one another, this is a feature of the interaction among elements or nodes of the system (the participants) and, from the point of view of the func-tioning of the system as a whole, no normativity in language use other than that which speaks to the mechanical ‘effectiveness’ of information conveyance among nodes (partici-pants) can be conceived. Indeed, Harter and Phillips (2004) note that systems theory has been criticized for being silent on ethics. Its result is considered to be social engineering, through which an elite consisting of technical experts is able to determine the shape and life of communities or society (Harter and Phillips, 2004). Its problematic nature vis-a-vis democracy, as detected by Habermas, has been noted by Zurn:

[One of] Habermas’s … main reservation[s] was straightforwardly normative and political. Luhmann advocated withdrawing decisions in many social spheres from the explicit oversight of democratic politics and the public sphere, in order to take advantage of the supposed complexity-controlling achievements of publicly unaccountable technocrats schooled in systems theory. In short, to the extent that a fully radicalized systems theory promotes a ‘counter-enlightenment’ … social technology, Habermas rejected the practical realization of functionalist insights in the name of the dialogical, public exercise of critical reason and democratic self-government. (2010: 211)1

Thus, systems theory appears to be inattentive to the inequalities and asymmetries of power, and, worse, suitable as a tool in the hands of authoritarianism. Montuori writes:

Although GST [General Systems Theory] had introduced the notion of the open system, with the accompanying potential for disequilibrium, in social science much emphasis had been placed on the importance of maintaining equilibrium in the face of turbulent environments. Politically this was seen as an ideologically conservative support of the status quo, particularly in sociology. Systems-based functionalist approaches, and in particular the work of the leading German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, a protégé of Parsons, came in for criticism again in the 1980s, during the height of the postmodern debate, for being instrumentalizing, totalizing, and coercive. Postmodern critiques of modernity often portrayed systems approaches as the scientistic apotheosis of social engineering and technocracy. (2007)




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While Gunaratne does not advise non-Western scholars to blindly embrace systems theory – his suggestion includes critique within a framework of metatheorization (2010: 486) – I would like to argue that the result of such critical appropriation can only be a better systems theory, not one that marks a break from it.

Another element of Gunaratne’s article which needs to be discussed is his seemingly uncritical acceptance of Alatas’ (2006: 32–3) statement of problems faced by non-Western scholars of social science, some of which are quoted below:

The almost exclusive influence of Anglo-American – and to some extent French and German – works on the ideas, models, problem selection, methodologies and research priorities of social science.

The general neglect of indigenous literary and philosophical traditions as sources for social science theory building; and the lack of originality in generating novel concepts, new theoretical perspectives and innovative research methods.

The uncritical adoption or imitation of Western social science models, including auto-Orientalism – the internalization of Orientalist constructions, which engendered an essentialist dichotomy between Western and non-Western societies – the latter identified as backward, barbaric and irrational. (Gunaratne, 2010: 476)

As for the first issue, namely the overwhelming influence of Western social science, I would like to argue that it can be considered a problem only if it acts as an impediment to the work of non-Western scholars. This leads to the question as to what should be the focus of non-Western scholars’ work. Should it be different by definition from that of their Western colleagues? Only if the answer is yes can the question of Western influence causing problems arise. We may note that, while there are obvious differences between Western and non-Western societies, the set of useful questions that conceivably can be asked by social scientists – for example about economic inequalities, asymmetries of power, gender roles, etc. – are substantially the same in the two cases, as these are not specific to Western societies but are features of all societies. However, even if the questions were different, the mere fact of influence could not have been considered a problem, as it is precisely through such influences that knowledge and culture grow and spread. Apart from the Indian contribution to mathematics, about which every child in India reads in school, there are facts that are not so widely known but which strongly underline the fact that thought emanating from the non-West has influenced the West over the millennia. Panaino (2002), for instance, speaks of a ‘dialectic dynamic’ between East and West. He points out that the East was a powerful influence on Greek culture – which, we may note, is generally considered the fountainhead of Western culture, poli-tics and philosophy – and that signs of this influence could be seen in poetry, the arts and architecture, in some aspects of the cults and of philosophy, and even in the development of the idea of the Greek identity (Panaino, 2002: 2).

An objection can also be raised regarding Alatas’ third point, namely Orientalism. While some form of essentialism may still exist, at the present time it is difficult to agree with his observation that non-Western societies are viewed as backward, barbaric and irrational. Although I am not aware of any survey of scholarly writing that assesses the





subject matter of this claim, I can state with some confidence that there is little evidence of these assumptions on the part of Western scholars in at least that subset of the current social science literature – admittedly not large – which has come to my notice, being directly or indirectly related to communication, as well as accessible to me in different ways at different times.

The aim of the above discussion is to note that the discourse of de-westernization needs to be critiqued as much as the Eurocentrism and Orientalism in communication studies, and in social science in general, need to be critiqued. In light of this, I would like to put forward the following arguments.

(1) It is necessary not to be hasty in rejecting theories of Western origin. As Malik (2002: 10–11) notes, the Western tradition ‘is not Western in any essential sense, but only through an accident of geography and history’. In fact, he points out, the Renaissance and the development of science both owe a great debt to Islamic learning. The ideas that are known as ‘Western’ are actually universal in nature and serve as the foundation for the happiness and progress of humanity. It is for this reason that, for the greater part of the 20th century, radicals, especially from the Third World, ‘recognized that the problem of imperialism was not that it was a Western ideology, but that it was an obstacle to the pursuit of the progressive ideals that arose out of the Enlightenment’. Malik quotes Martinique-born Frantz Fanon as observing that ‘[a]ll the elements of a solution to the great problems of humanity have, at different times, existed in European thought. But Europeans have not carried out in practice the mission that fell to them’. On the same lines, Malik notes that C.L.R. James denounced European colonialism but respected ‘the learning and profound discoveries of Western civilization’. For thinkers like Fanon and James, Malik states, ‘the aim of anti-imperialism was not to reject Western ideas but to reclaim them for all of humanity’.

Clearly, the question here is whether Enlightenment values should be privileged/retained or jettisoned in the name of de-westernization. The answer, in my opinion, is that these values must be retained insofar as they speak to the emancipation of mankind from oppression and subjugation of all kinds, even by science.

(2) There is a need to examine the belief – which is one of the rationales for de-westernization – that Western models of communication often do not do justice to non-Western communicative situations but indigenous models can. Both theoretical and empirical studies are needed to determine the fit (or lack thereof) between specific Western models and specific non-Western communicative situations. Otherwise, time and other resources may be wasted in reinventing the wheel by developing models and theories that are more or less identical or very similar to already existing ones. No less importantly, the democratic ideal upheld by Western theories may be sidetracked to the further disadvantage of those who already are socially disadvantaged.

In this connection we may consider the sadharanikaran model of communication, which some scholars have introduced from Sanskrit texts (Yadava, 1987). The term, Adhikary (2009: 69–70) writes, is derived from the Sanskrit sadharan (general) and has been translated as ‘generalized presentation’ (Vedantatirtha, 1936: 35), ‘simplification’ (Yadava, 1998: 187) and ‘universalization’ (Dissanayake, 2006: 4). It is closely related to the concept of sahridayata or ‘a state of common orientation, commonality or one-ness’ (Adhikary, 2009: 70). Sadharanikaran, Adhikary writes, is the process of attaining




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sahridayata by participants in communication. A diagrammatic representation of the model is shown in Figure 1.

Adhikary’s explanation of the model points towards considerable conceptual richness involving sandarbha (context), preshaka (sender), prapaka (receiver), bhava (moods or emotions), abhivyanjana (expression or encoding), sandesha (message or information), sarani (channel), dosha (noise) and other elements. However, there appears to be little that is fundamentally different from Western theories, which take these same factors into account under different names, and it is not clear how much of a different perspective on an Indian or Nepalese communicative situation would be gained by adopting this model rather than the Western ones.

Figure 1. Sadharanikaran modelSource: Adhikary (2009: 73)





Obviously in an attempt to establish a special appropriateness of this model for Indian and Nepalese communicative situations, Adhikary writes that, in these societies, marked as they are by ‘asymmetrical relationships between communication parties … [due to] complex hierarchies of castes, languages, cultures and religious practices’ (2009: 74), communication and mutual understanding is possible through sahridayata. But it needs to be pointed out that asymmetries of various types are present every-where, not only in South Asia, and the process of mutual understanding has been extensively theorized in the West in similar terms. Examples are the encoding/decod-ing scheme of Hall (2006: 163–73), Ricoeur’s insight into the communicative over-coming of the individual’s ‘fundamental solitude’ through the fusion of the respective horizons of participants in communication (1976: 15), and even some versions (e.g. Foerster’s) of cybernetic models of communication. Nevertheless, in my view such sophisticated non-western models as sadharanikaran need to be presented to students of communication globally in order to demonstrate what theoretical treasures had been created by non-Western scholars centuries and millennia before corresponding Western concepts arose, but without making any inflated claims about their special significance to communication in the East and new insights or analytic strategies.

(3) We need to ask whether West and East are being reified in the discourse of de-westernization. As Dissanayake (2003: 19, 32) notes, it is necessary to remember that there are cultural divisions not only in the West but also within Asian countries. To appreciate this, one simply needs to recall that in India, for instance, there are major differences along ethnic, linguistic, religious and other lines, not to mention glaring economic disparities. It may be safe to say that the number of points of cultural commonality between, say, a land-less labourer belonging to one of the dalit (untouchable, literally ‘downtrodden’) castes in rural Uttar Pradesh state and a 20-something software programmer in Bangalore, used to a glitzy urban lifestyle, are fewer than those which exist between the latter and middle-class 20-somethings in metropolises in other parts of the world. What ‘Eastern’ theories, models and methods would be appropriate for cultural products that are being produced for our programmer friend, shot as they are in Western locales and (even when shot in India) replete with Western cultural references? In an ethnography of college students and their families in a medium-sized city of Punjab state, Rao (2006) found the following situation developing with respect to Bollywood (the Bombay-, or Mumbai-based, Hindi popular film industry) which according to conventional wisdom has played a significant role in creating the imagined community called India:

[T]he non-elite audiences find themselves increasingly distanced from the images of a dreamworld that Indian cinema is constructing. The globalizing environment of Bollywood films is creating an elitism constituted by the brand logic of transnational capital which is redefining the meaning of the masses. The audiences of Bollywood are now understood to be the upper middle-class diasporic and urban communities whose tastes, values, desires, and consumptions are reflected in these films. The masses of the rural, poor, and lower-middle class audiences find themselves distanced from these images and are less and less likely to consume them in the future. (2006: 1)

This apart, I wish to argue that there may be nothing essentially Western in some ‘Western’ theories or traditions (such as phenomenology) and these can be fruitfully




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integrated into ‘universally universal’ (Gunaratne) as opposed to Western universalist theorizing. One may cite Tamotsu Aoki’s (1991) paper on the paritta ritual of Buddhism as an example. As Dissanayake (2003: 19) notes, Aoki (1991) uses semiotic analysis to understand this ritual. Similar work has been done in India, for instance in a semiotic study of Yakshagana (Bapat, 1998), a form of performance art in Karnataka.

One frequent criticism of ‘Western’ social science is its positivism and its stress on quantitative methodologies. I would like to argue that this generalization may not be quite valid at present. For some time now, a strong qualitative, interpretive tradition has been developing in Northern academia – in step with, one may perhaps say, a general turn away from one-dimensional modernistic thinking in other spheres of life. (Not that the former has replaced the latter in any real sense, but that it has found a prominent place of its own.) Examples are discourse analysis, hermeneutics, etc. As early as in 1973, Clifford Geertz noted ‘an enormous increase in interest … in the role of symbolic forms in human life’, not only in anthropology but also in other areas of social studies. He added: ‘Meaning, that elusive and ill-defined pseudoentity we were once more than content to leave philosophers and literary critics to fumble with, has now come back into the heart of our discipline. Even Marxists are quoting Cassirer; even positivists, Kenneth Burke’ (1973: 29).

For those who might be inclined to consider Geertz’s enthusiasm somewhat mis-placed or premature (but understandable in someone who was a pioneer of this type of research), some figures will place the above in perspective. Results of a survey of major social science journals conducted by Kamhawi and Weaver (2003), quoted in Aslama et al. (2007), show that between 1980–4 and 1995–9, the share of qualitative studies had grown slowly but steadily from 24 percent to 28.3 percent, and the share of quantitative studies had fallen from 74 percent to 71.9 percent. Mottier (2005) writes:

Positivism remained for a long time the ‘orthodox consensus’ in social science methodology.… Today, the orthodox consensus is dead. It has been shattered over the past two decades as a result of attacks from various quarters. Central to the crusade against the orthodox consensus was the rehabilitation of subjectivity. Indeed, the hegemony of positivist methods has been defeated by what Rabinow and Sullivan (1987) have aptly termed the interpretive turn in the social sciences, that is, the growing influence of disciplines such as ethnomethodology, phenomenology and hermeneutics. In addition to the interpretive critique of positivist and objectivist perspectives, other attacks have come from within a post-positivist philosophy of science, in particular by authors such as Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, Hesse and Bhaskar on the one hand; Koyre, Cavailles, Canguilhelm and Bachelard on the other.

However, the question is not – or should not be – whether communication research in the South should abandon quantitative research altogether. In my opinion there is no reason why it should, as there are important questions that can be answered only through quantitative analysis or through a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, as we have seen in the preceding paragraph of this very article, in which I deployed fig-ures in support of the claim that interest in interpretive research has been increasing. The question rather is whether researchers in the global South have access to the sophisti-cated quantitative tools their Northern colleagues take for granted – such as the latest





version of the powerful but expensive SPSS (Statistical Program for the Social Sciences). To the best of my knowledge most of them do not. But that should not deter them from using quantitative methods on a limited scale, as and when their research questions require it: an ordinary calculator is often sufficient, and spreadsheet programmes like Microsoft Excel and OpenOffice Calc (part of the free OpenOffice package) have powerful statistical tools built into them.

(4) It is perhaps safe to say that the de-westernization project is an expression of the postcolonial impulse. Though the concepts of postcoloniality and postcolonialism con-stitute a strongly contested territory as indicated by Hall (1996), Childs and Williams (1997) and others, the previous sentence is intended to mean, simply, that the desire for de-westernization in communication theory, that is, the desire to translate political freedom from colonialism (British in India’s case) into scholarly distancing from Euro-Anglo-American theory, is part of a wider trend (if there is one) of cultural decoloniza-tion. This being the case, it seems logical that work done in allied fields by postcolonial scholars should be integrated with this project. Shome and Hegde write:

[T]he communication dimension (except media) has hardly received any attention in postcolonial studies, just as postcolonial issues, for the most part, have been elided in communication studies. We consequently (recognize) that bringing these two areas together could invite a productive reconceptualization of communication, as well as a thinking through of the politics of postcoloniality from the perspective of communication. (2002: 249)

They add that postcolonial scholarship is not wedded to any particular method, but employs that which happens to be appropriate for the specific question at hand. However, the work of these scholars is marked by a commitment to methodological self-reflexivity: ‘While working within a certain philosophical or methodological tradition (be it decon-struction or ethnography), postcolonial scholars remain acutely aware of the history, heritage, and legacies of such methods, and the dilemma that consequently confronts the researcher’ (2002: 259). In other words, viewed through postcolonial lenses, the project of de-westernization would try to take into account, to bring forth into the light of analy-sis, the web of its own latent and unconscious connections and affiliation with the Western tradition. If this is a hermeneutic process, I think that fact can be stated without any undue embarrassment about using a ‘Western’ term. For the naming of a concept enables one to deploy instruments and strategies that have accumulated under the sign of that concept over years of scholarly use.

An observation by Dissanayake (2006)2 on the subject of de-westernization’s fruitful integration with postcolonial scholarship is pertinent here. He writes that while Asian communication scholars have a powerful grasp of classical texts and traditions, they ‘do not display an equal interest on issues of knowledge, power and ideology’ (2006: Abstract). Postcolonial scholars are strong in this area, but know much less about classi-cal texts and traditions. I would like to stress that if de-westernization is to be a moment in the resurgence of the ex-colonies from the margin, questions of knowledge, power and ideology can be ignored only at the risk of creating and perpetuating new oppressive hierarchies, this time within the new postcolonial de-westernized dispensation. In other words, Southern scholars can ignore these questions only if they are willing to let a new,




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deeply conservative functionalism – this time according to classical Eastern principles like the Manusmriti or Confucianism – take hold.

(5) I would like to argue that whatever is done from an ‘Asian’ or ‘Indian’ perspective – non-Western perspective in general – needs to add to insights that already have been gained by scholars working in the ‘Western’ traditions. The stress should be on evolving powerful theories, whatever their pedigree, Western/Northern or otherwise.

(6) As Dissanayake (2003: 31–2) notes vis-à-vis Habermasian and Buddhist princi-ples of consensual speech, there is much in common between ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ theories/models. Similarly, I have noted (above) some commonalities between the Sanskrit sadharanikaran model and Western models of communication. While these commonalities need to be brought out, along with differences, the exercise will be extremely fruitful if analytically important differences can be found, as only such differences will be able to throw new light on the subject at hand. Similarities, on the other hand, are useful for demonstrating to the world once again – for it has been done again and again by many scholars, no less of the West than of the East – the richness of Eastern philosophic traditions.

(7) In the interest of the communication discipline, any ‘Indian’ or ‘Eastern’ or non-Western theories/models that are deployed need to be intelligible to Western scholars and those of the South who have been brought up within the Western tradition. Communication theories, as instances of metacommunication, should bring about shared understanding, not put up barriers.

(8) As Kidd notes:

Not all alternate views come from Asia. Latin America, for example, has a rich tradition growing out of the work by Mattelart in critical cultural studies.… [I]t would be beneficial to closely examine the influences of Latin American and other regions on the development of communication theory and practices. (2002: 25)3

Therefore, it is necessary to avoid a situation in which Indian scholars study only Indian texts and Chinese scholars study Chinese texts. An openness to all traditions is needed in the interest of knowledge.

Postscript

This commentary, I am afraid, may be construed by some as a plea for the continuation of Western hegemony in communication and media studies. It is not. My objective is only to see that the baby is not thrown out with the bathwater. Though some authors have stressed that their intention is to enrich the discourse on communication and not to blindly discard anything simply because of its Western origin, I still sense a real danger of that very approach taking hold in some other circles. Through this commentary I am making an appeal to communication scholars of the South to adopt a balanced approach and make sure that under no circumstances do the Eastern and other non-Western theo-ries bring through the back door the functionalism that has been rejected by many in the West. In other words, this is an appeal for the retention of a sharp critical edge in the new theories of communication.





Notes

1. Luhmann was ‘devoted’ to systems theory according to Nollmann (2004).2. Unfortunately, I did not have access to the article itself.3. Mattelart is of Belgian origin but worked in Latin America for a very long time.

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To de-westernize, yes, but with a critical edge: A response to Gunaratne and others

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