<TITLE: Development Communication Policy and Economic Fundamentalism in Ghana
ACADEMIC DOMAIN: social sciences
DISCIPLINE: journalism and mass communication
EVENT TYPE: doctoral defence discussion
FILE ID: UDEFD070
NOTES: continuation of UDEFP070

RECORDING DURATION: 116 min 50 sec

RECORDING DATE: 28.6.2004

NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: unknown

NUMBER OF SPEAKERS: 2

S1: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Dagbani (Ghana); ACADEMIC ROLE: research student; GENDER: male; AGE: 31-50

S2: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Norwegian; ACADEMIC ROLE: senior staff; GENDER: male; AGE: 51-over

SS: several simultaneous speakers>



<PRESENTATION UDEFP070 by S1>

<S1> now i ask you professor <NAME S2> as my opponent appointed by the faculty of social sciences to make the comments on my dissertation which you consider pertinent </S1>
<P:13>
<S2> <COUGH> , well let me first express my gratitude to university of tampere for appointing me the opponent at this disputation , or i mean <NAME S1> 's doctoral dissertation on development communication policy in an era of economic fundamentalism in ghana , and these introductory words are more or less superfluous after having heard what the <FOREIGN> doctorant </FOREIGN> has said however i'm going to continue , when i was asked to serve as the opponent it was not difficult to say yes it was like an offer i couldn't refuse , the topic of the disser- dissertation is one that has interested me in er for many years , i've been working on the politics of communication and media development both here in the north as well as in africa , and i'm particularly interested in er the paradigms that have informed the discussions on development communication and i've been so for many years and i think a doctoral disputation it's an extraordinary moment for continuing such a discussion so i'm very grateful to you that you you have that i've been given the opportunity to continue this discussion , and let me begin by saying that i was not disappointed when i read <NAME S1> 's dissertation and as it's customary at least in my part of the world that is norway @@ , i will er begin this disputation by giving a brief and i think i bit different perspective on the dis- er er dissertation than we have heard now and let me add that to sum this dissertation is no easy task , er the dissertation consists of nine chapters and a bibliography altogether 235 pages , and the structure of the thesis is as follows chapter one serves as an introduction chapter two is called modernisation and development communication questioning the assumptions chapter three development and andr- anthropology of modernity and chapter four technologised development chapter five communication policy in practice chapter si- six the articulation of telecom policy in ghana chapter seven telecom regulation the postcolonial state and big business and chapter eight digital consumption in accra and chapter nine is conclusion , it is (xx) also possible to divide the dissertation into two , where the first four chapters serve as a kind of theoretical introduction to the rest and then the four next that is from five to eight serves as a concrete analysis with historical reference to the situation in ghana and then there's the ninth chapter which is the conclusion , and er this means that the dissertation as a whole is divided into what i would call a principal theoretical discussion and secondly a very concrete analysis of the situation in ghana , the first chapter presents that theoretical and methodological framework of the study as well as the background too and formulation of the focus of the analysis in the dissertation and the main research questions which you did not allude to in your introduction but which i would like to repeat are as follows , <READING ALOUD> with a new economic liberalisation on the one hand and the responsibility of government to promote access from for all including economically vulnerable and marginalised groups how does policy respond to this challenge , what are the implications of regulatory mechanisms and competition policies for both the public and commercial operators of communication services as well as the overall national objective of fostering an imagined community of citizens , what are the implications of intellectual dominance of the IMF and the world bank in the communication policy process in ghana </READING ALOUD> this is on page 17 in your er book , and these questions are then presented within the framework of sketching (and) development or communication theory in relation to theories' (own) development from the modernisation paradigm also called the dominant paradigm and onwards , the interrelationship between national development policies and the policies of major international organisations such as IMF and the world bank with a strong critique of liberalisation and the liberalisation efforts of the latter two , and in relation to this already in the first chapter the <FOREIGN> doctorant </FOREIGN> introduces some of the critical perspectives that guide his analysis in the thesis as a whole , they include in my opinion a healthy scepticism of over-optimism of the possibilities that new communication technologies may have for the development process in africa which is based within the framework of attempts at introducing democratic reforms in africa in the last couple of decades , and he contrast this with the situation in 1960s when attempts at democratisation in the wake of independence movements were shadowed over by cold war big power politics , at that time references to national development programmes led to total government control of all media as this was seen as a requirement for national pro- progress and the democratic aspect of communication was not considered at all , this was a perspective that continued into the era of military dictatorships and developmental one-party systems , ironically as also the candidate indicates this implies that modernisation theories of development thus emerged with what may be called grass roots development policy , as well as within the with the (dependency) theory , as the candidate succinctly points out thus and i quote him from page 16 <READING ALOUD>  thus development modernisation and progress despite their philosophical and ideological implications zoom in to one and the same thing within policy circles  </READING ALOUD> . <NAME S1> 's perspective on development is a holistic one in which one must analyse and act politically on the basis of an understanding of development as combining all aspects of the social process and that it is not possible to isolate one aspect (with a view) of using it to (leapfrog) , in this perspective as the candidate states the ICTs must be viewed as part of a wider category of technologies or mediation which have a structuring , effect on social discourse , and as he say- er writes on page ten where communication technologies provide a public and social space for the constant process on national imagination and nation formation against the backdrop of more potent primordial and particularistic identities , and this brings the author to address what is in my opinion one of the most interesting aspects of this dissertation namely the concept of the nation state in africa , and the theme is re- recurring feature in the analysis of the dissertation as a whole and as he said in his introduction that means that to look at the postcolonial state of ghana is to look at it as a be- state in the becoming not as a state that has developed into a nation state which obviously also raises the whole question of what is (the) relationship between nation and state , and this of course raises acute problems in relation to definition both of the concepts of nation in africa as well as elsewhere and also the question of what is the role of the state in relation to the question of what is a nation . this brings us to the theoretical and methodological basis for the dissertation which is spelled out in the first chapter and to which you've already alluded and the theoretically (at) the focus is to be found in a discussion of the relationship between on the one hand a political economy approach to media development for instance illustrated by the work of nicholas garnham and on the other the british cultural studies approach which he refers to from raymond williams the late great raymond williams onwards to among others stuart hall , and particularly er er the cand- candidate makes reference to the debate between garnham and grossberg in 1980 95 in order to bring his argument further as he finds both perspectives relevant but inadequate , so in order to move forward he takes his (clue) from vincent mosco who has written on political economy of the media as well as from anthony giddens and proposes to analyse the process which are in his which is in his focus on the basis of four analytical categories commodification spatialisation structuration and articulation this is stated on page 25 in case you're interested , (there is of course) a danger of eclecticism in bringing together into one analytical perspective political economy cultural studies and giddens' sociology but i do think that the candidate manages to argue for the usefulness and unity of his approach the framework of understanding that is to be <NAME S1> 's basis for his work is thus what he calls articulation theory with reference to the work of laclau and mouffe , combined with political ec- economy and theories of this relationship between structure and agency , his arguments for this approach can be summed up in what he states on page 26 , <READING ALOUD> the primary </READING ALOUD> and i quote <READING ALOUD> the primary relevance of articulation as a methodological approach is that it helps us overcome the problem of determination in social theory </READING ALOUD> , it is by the way interesting to note that in the printed version which you have in front of you of the dissertation the candidate has cut out the sentence that followed this in the final draft on which i based my statement to the (faculty) namely that <READING ALOUD> articulation </READING ALOUD> and i quote <READING ALOUD> also helps us to overcome the creeping sense of totality that (xx) in giddens' concept of structuration </READING ALOUD> , we may come back to that relationship later in the discussion today , while <NAME S1> arg- forcibly argues and with consistency about the advantages of articulation as both the theoretical and methodological approach one may always raise the question of what relationship is between this theoretical approach as a basis for understanding of development and as a method method purely methodological question for concrete research , this is an issue which becomes particularly acute in relation to among others the very interesting chapter eight where the author discusses and analyses among others concrete experiences of day-to-day implications of the changes in communication policies in ghana and thus moves into the terrain of ethnographic studies , this is an issue which the author is aware of and which he offers the opportunity for interesting further discussions and we shall return to that , chapter two discusses a number of issues mainly associated with a question of na- of the nature of the postcolonial state and extensively the role of state in development policies and strategies (in relation to) the market and theories and practices of liberalisation , and as i said he also discusses here the question of what constitutes the nation in relation to an african state , and due to the topic of the dissertation the author focuses on the interrelationship between communication and development but his analysis has a bearing on development theory in general in precisely the way he brings together the perspective on communication technology within emergence of postcolonial nation states and this is the focus of his critique of contemporary development theories . the question of the state thus may be said to form a sort of core problematic of what guides <NAME S1> 's discussion on modernisation of development communication , there he gives us an interesting re-interpretation of the various historical paradigms of the development communication theory and there he comes up with a pointed criticism of also the model which is associated with an alternative development paradigm and if i were to identify your , development theoretical perspective i would like to call you a critical moderniser <SS> @@ </SS> and i'm certain that that this is an issue that you would like to discuss further later , in chapter three the <FOREIGN> doctorant </FOREIGN> continues (of) the discussion of from chapter two of the state (related to) theories of modernisation with a particular focus on the role of communication technologies and particular in relation to the (concurrent liberation) of state society relationships , and <NAME S1> identifies the role what he calls postcolonial progressive scholarship on page 83 and i assume that that must be what we are dealing with here to be aimed at recovering the developmentalist state in such a perspective and analysis of why the strong emphasis of the new role of NGOs as development engines and how they coincide with the dismantling of the development state is an , crucial one , in advocating this sort of study the author draws a parallel to the role of the state in the development of for instance the nordic welfare societies which we are now part of , pointing to- out that it took the welfare state a long time to democratise resources to provide a needed infrastructure in the area of transport telecom media education welfare and health and et cetera before it started to go into retreat if it really has gone into retreat and to allow market forces to keep the balance in civil society state relations , in this context it is important to be aware of the fact that er is a dialectical relationship between the state and civil society weak states correspond to weak civil societies , and a paradox that <NAME S1> calls our attention to is that the developmentalist state is being dismantled only after a few de- decades without having achieved the provision of the basic infrastructure nor creating the basis for the formation of the imagined community of the nation state , of course the candidate is aware of the (faulting) comparison between the postcolonial state in africa and the nordic welfare states and he's of course not oblivious for the fact of the different conjunctures involved in the evolution of the two state types however the comparison may not be as far fetched as all that and let me now call the attention to a book that i'm afraid has been forgotten (although) it shouldn't be and you made a reference to it so i'm very pleased to see that and that's a book written by the german sociologist dieter senghaas and it's called the european experience a historical critique of development theory and this is particularly a way of looking at how did the various different developments in europe actually (form also) the understanding for the word development as such in short the question that er dieter senghaas puts and i'm now putting that in a reader's digest way is why did the balkans become the balkans and the scandinavians become the scandinavians . chapter four , starts with the critique of the belief that it is possible to leapfrog into modernity , and this is as i've already pointed out an issue which is very central to your dissertation , the strength of this chapter is among others the very comprehensive command that <NAME S1> has of theoretical approaches to the issue of technological development and the principal possession he maintains in relation to his critique of the inadequacies of market solutions to the question of access to communication technologies , and he also discusses in- this (in relation to) the technology and civil society er configuration which is a continuation of the discussion started in chapter three , combining this with his perspective with a theorist (xx) in chapter one and combining it with a discussion of the role in technology development processes the candidate also raises the issues of causality in a very interesting manner , and does so by reverting to articulation theory as a way of understanding and maybe solving the problem of causality , when he then moves on to the second part of his dissertation ghana becomes representative of developments elsewhere in africa , and in chapter five the theoretical perspectives from the four previous chapters are being utilised to address the special historic experiences in ghana in relation to particularly broadcasting policies and in particularly he discusses how communication policy can be seen in relation (the) interrelationship between plans and objectives in relation to design and implementation , one of the strengths of this chapter is what is the way demonstrates this historical relationships between broadcasting policies and subsequent and parallel developments or policy shifts in telecom and other areas of communication and development strategies and policies , the historical dimension comes out in the description how the practice of using radio to create a sense of belonging to a community was initiated by the colonial authorities and later how broadcasting policies in early independent ghana in many ways may be understood as a continuation of colonial practices , thus an interesting aspect is that both the colonial and the early independent government emphasised aspects such as creating wide access and public service ideals and that is the practice over market interests , according to <NAME S1> 's analysis this changed as he made reference to in his introductory remarks in the early 1980s when the adoption of economic structure adjustment programme (xx) to whole configuration of also communication policies and where the between on the one interest interest of the state in providing wide access was played down in relation to the interest for the market , an important assertion in this analysis is the question of how the relationship between the development and the colonial and the postcolonial state as the well as the rupture that the economic structural adjustment programme (represent) also imply a total change in the way that one u- use the whole question of what is the role of communication in relation to development , chapters six and seven are closely linked and may be seen as a continuation of the analytical perspectives applied in chapter five in relation to broadcasting (about) moving into telecommunications , and er this is being done in a way that also has implications outside ghana and i'd i'd say also outside africa i think it has implications for many parts of the world , and i think that the way he describes er the attempts to regulate the telecommunication market in ghana and the contradiction between shady business pa- practices and the weaknesses of the state may be read as an exemplary story of how well-intentioned policies may lead to results that are harmful to a just social development , and i think another strength of this chapter is the attention to detail that it displays , and chapter eight is as i said a very interesting example of <NAME S1> working as a media ethnologist , the chapter consist to a large degree of your participatory observations of and interviews with users of telecentres cell phones and internet cafes in ghana and i must say that one of the biggest internet cafes i've ever seen in my life is actually situated right in accra it's a fabulous experience , this chapter thus gives a fascinating description of how new communication technologies change behaviour and perceptions as well as social context in an african society , and the the end of the chapter the candidate refers to a survey of how ghanaians view market principles as national policy and the researchers behind this survey concluded that <READING ALOUD> ghanaians are more likely to turn to the market than to civil society or the state when they are looking for strategies to solve their personal problems and on the political front citizens are likely to turn to religious leaders or private patrons than the national and local government elected leaders in the first instance </READING ALOUD> this is a quote from page 211 , and the chapter then ends with some perceptive reflections on the relationship between digital consumption participation and access with a faint echo of antonio gramsci jurgen habermas and walter benjamin and i would like to quote this because i think these two paragraphs that i'm going to quote to you are so beautiful , the first one goes like this , <READING ALOUD> a gramscian analysis will suggest that the hegemonic class and its ideology of the market which has been trumpeted as better deliverer of services than the state primarily influenced the respondents of this survey and that the opium of religion is also there to complete the equation of domination that will be a legitimate approach of making sense of these data but that will foreclose the possibility of interrogating how market serves as an arena of participation at a time when the old civic system is in popular decline when the public sphere is in decline it's in decline either due to its structural transformation or commercialisation or just plain deligitimisation of the civic order the better place to look at citizen consumer action is in the market this is warranted because political citizenship is declining in favour of cultural citizenship discourses on the need for stronger state involvement in supporting marginalised communities to also have access to the internet is totally absent within in the public domain in accra it's a kind of absence that reflects the distrust of the state to deliver on any promise of increasing access </READING ALOUD> and then he ends the whole chapter with the following , <READING ALOUD> first of all we have to remember that the promise of modernity that the postcolonial state made to the people and tried to achieve through modernisation was invariably a promise to deliver modern goods be they physical products cars new roads and hospitals or modern services and convenience such as money western education and technological know-how in agriculture urban planning and what have you if modernisation is expected to deliver the hitherto subject into citizenship then it can only be achieved after access to modern goods has been provided consumption is therefore complicit in the formation of citizenship in the postcolony if even it discriminates against the non-citizen consumption despite its tragic ramifications marks the moment of arrival into modernity or better still into the modernised modernised postcolony and the digital flaneur is the avant-garde  </READING ALOUD> , very nice <P:07> the chapter nine serve as a conclusion to the study but in many ways i also do think that it serves as an opening up to further studies as you yourself indicate and i do think that when you point out that you are really working in an area of interdisciplinarity that's absolutely true but it also means that some of the questions and issues that are raised by working in the area of interdisciplinarity maybe comes up more closely in the final concluding chapter which i don't really read as a conclusion but rather as a continuation of something to come , but it's also a way that it says this non-concluding conclusion says something about the strength and the variety and the broadness of this dissertation , it's a significant discussion on models and paradigms in the area of development communication and as the comprehensive bibliography referred to in the dissertation shows the author has a magisterial knowledge of the field and he makes very intelligent use of the wide material of secondary literature that he has read . i am as you can hear very impressed by this study nevertheless i have a few questions to raise in the (xx) coming but let me first before we go into that even if it's not the (rigor) at the moment to say that i've also looked a bit on er on er whether there are any misprints and typos et cetera and i found some one place for instance gramsci is spelled without the s , and er , sometimes actually three or four times you start an argument by saying first but then there is no second or third , and er , i've got in finally i must say that formally the dissertation is absolutely up to standards so i think that we can then continue with a discussion of your dissertation and my first question is the obligatory one , now we're going to sit down yes , how do you react to my summation of your dissertation </S2>
<S1> thank you </S1>
<SPEAKERS SIT DOWN, P:17>
<S1> i think i , thank you very much for the lovely comments and appreciation of er my work and it's actually delightful to hear those beautiful words about my own work and this is the first time that i get to find myself appreciated at that level , your summation of this work i guess it's always better that somebody else does such a summary for you to get to see what you did and i must say that it is very accurate and if not flattering actually and , i generally tend to agree with all those comments you raised and the detailed discussions at the chapter level too tends to put the whole work into perspective and i think that i do not have any special or significant disagreements with you and the way you brought all the chapters to (home) and thank you for that </S1>
<S2> okay thank you then let's move on to the discussion and it says in er the instructions we have received about how to conduct this er ceremony that er , er in number eight in this sheet that i have received that the opponent generally begins the actual examination by focusing his or her attention on methodological and general questions and that's what i'm going to do , so i would like to call your attention to what you write on page 30 on the relationship between method and theory , there you write <READING ALOUD> one normally uses a method of research to arrive at a conclusion of certainty that can be of use for instance survey research ethno- ethnography and content analysis all offer sort of solace of closure where one can draw a summary of definite theoretical results or theoretical possessions but articulation in this sense lacks a predictive value nothing is guarantable , the quest for theoretical certainty is abandoned for temporary and working theoretical possessions as temporary closure for subsequent re-theorisation </READING ALOUD> and you refer to slack <READING ALOUD> this is not the moment for methodological weakness of articulation rather it marks its quality as a method of rigor </READING ALOUD> and with this in mind i would like you to make some comments and maybe come up with some reflections on the relationship between articulation as theory and articulation as method because the way you are using articulation as a theory in this dissertation and i think for instance what you write about how the nation state is being articulated a postcolonial er nation state is being articulated is theoretical rather than a methodological observation and i also think that when you write later in your dissertation on the question of er technology and articulation and that is on page just a moment , er , that's on page 113 to 114 as far as i remember i also think that you move from er the problem away from the problem of how you actually it's on page 116 articulation theory and ICTs , er you actually move away from the problem of how do you actually go about doing the research in favour of , making a theoretical point so i would like you to reflect a bit on the relationship (between) theory and method and i think this is very important because in a way you are also looking at something that we shall revert to later , how are you going to implement the policies also in relation to this relationship between theory and method </S2>
<S1> thank you and er it is a question that strikes at a very heart of my method in the sense that articulation theory hasn't had a lot , of , use in communication research it's often mentioned and abandoned , it's often praised and abandoned and there are very few examples of use articulation for a research of this magnitude and one of the things that i come to tell myself is that one of the (xx) i did as a researcher was to go on using articulation for this project , now having said that i want to point out that what makes articulation theory interesting is that or if you want to really appreciate it is to remember that why was articulation theory mobilised into use as a method , and the reason was that in communication studies as all media scholars would testify is a fact that er issue of determination and especially political economic perspective had always been there , you use (xx) (method) and you wind around and you come back to the same issue that you can always foretell the results or give a (gesture) as to what it's going to give , and like i compare it to other research methods you always have something to tell there is always this eureka moment this is what i found with this research method , and this is precisely the opposite of the objective of articulation theory positioned as a method , the idea of articulation theory is a theory and a method as a method it's used to tease out what has already come to as (packed) as truths is used as an instrument for unpacking ideological formations is used as (xx) er mechanism that will give us what comes to us as hegemonic , er one of the (introduced terms) that i refer to in my studies is the fact that gramsci tells us that hegemony comes to us without an inventory , it comes to us (only) we can't really unpack it and tell what it is and as a method articulation has this possibility of unpacking and teasing out the various moments and elements that have cohered into forming a particular formation that is hegemony , and this is where i see articulation (xx) , now the price you pay for using such a method is a fact that you do not arrive at a moment that you can say hey eureka this is it this is what i found , but rather you are able to disrupt , and unpack , and so it's a more of a disconstructive method than a construction of than a method for construction it's a method that you use to er er expose policy but it is not a method that will help you to build up policy , and for me when i started this project i mean i could tell that the whole area of policy had been packed right out from colonial to postcolonial times and this was the positions of policy and for me the task was to actually unpack to tease out those moments at which policy had come to speak a particular language for example of market deemed as solution for all problems of development , and once i succeeded in exposing the inability of market to deliver and i tell you that my job is done , if you ask me then where you go next i'll tell you actually i don't know <SS> @@ </SS> but i have been able to tell you that this is how we got defrauded into believing that market will solve our problems and er well er </S1>
<S2> now you're moving into the market and this er the role of the market <S1> [yes] </S1> [and you're] not you're not addressing the method really </S2>
<S1> yeah the method i i'm using method to show how market for as as an instance well coming back to method er articulation like as a theory doesn't give you , like i said it doesn't give you s- moments where you say this is what i found but it gives you a theory for which you will re-theorise moments later </S1>
<S2> okay er the way you answered sort of and now i'm going to be nasty <S1> @@ </S1> it sort of reminds me of er two er of two er not necessarily theoretically compatible ways of looking at this , one is a way that you actually referred to yourself namely alt- althusserian ideology criticism , and the other one which you actually w- when you said that you can use it to and you made reference to gramsci to actually criticise the ideology of the market which is you know , and my question is what is difference between articulation theory and this althusserian ideology criticism that's what my first reaction to this , the other reaction to this which is also in a way summed up in your in the subheading on page 23 which is very nice rhetorically but i'm not so certain it's nice when it comes to content namely <READING ALOUD>  articulating a method articulation as method </READING ALOUD> , it's very nice rhetorics in that but er what it actually says is more or less the same that you would say in the hermeneutic way of thinking i mean you know something and then you know something more and then you know something more and then you have this circle and that's actually also what you the way you describe articulation theory , do you have any comments on this </S2>
<S1> yes yes yes precisely what makes articulation different from hermeneutic approach is the fact that in articulation you have moments that you pick or what stuart hall prefers to call lines of tangential force , which you can bracket out these moments and be able to point out from here , now if you really want to go into further than just er er were you to (xx) (this circle) of identification and deconstruction then you will see that at some particular moments you are well placed to identify how certain arbitrary elements have been brought together to cohere to form a particular appearance that makes it's look very , unbreakable as very strong and in that circumstances we say that er once you are able to unpack and come to the moment of identifying these moments and elements that you pick up as lines of tangential force that has impact on articulation of a theory of of a policy sorry , then you begin to tell you begin to tell yourself that this is exactly what you have been looking for unlike going into a loop of a circle where you go around to say you run you are running into an into a sort of hermeneutic circle where you go around issues , no , you break out at elements and moments being aware that at every element and moment there is always the question of (xx) that is not a closure it's a temporary closure , so far articulation theory it gives us temporary closures for which to engage in radical democratic practice , and then that links up to what probably the most forceful theories on articulation that laclau and mouffe that i refer (xx) , what you (xx) with such a very pers- (xx) of identifying temporary closures that are liable to subsequent closures and opinions is the fact that once we begin to understand that nothing comes as fact nothing comes as determined economic classes are not actually there (out there) , then we have the possibility of thinking of the power of hegemony as a product of discourse and not as a final economic outcome of a particular formation , for me this is how i see how articulation actually distances itself from ending up in a similar loop similar to for example a hermeneutic circle </S1>
<S2> but how does that er relate to the althusser althusser's theory of ideological state apparatuses </S2>
<S1> well althusser like i stated in my study what althusser provides in theories of articulation is the fact that he provides us , a basis from which to start discurt- discussion <S2> [mhm mhm] </S2> [articulation] articul- er althusser himself is not helpful in offering us this serious discussion on articulation but he allows for example er mouffe and laclau to start discussing from when althusser ends up with the issue of totality and causality , and then it it it then allows mouffe and laclau to make the point that in sort of the althusserian totalities we have relational totality <S2> [mhm] </S2> [as] to understand the fact that they are temporary formations <S2> [mhm] </S2> [althusser] will end up saying economy is a final instance of determination <S2> mhm  </S2> mouffe and laclau says no we'll have to (xx) althusser and abandon him at this stage and part ways with him and point out that what he calls as , as totality is actually a relational totality , and once we insert relational into the argument we discover that those moments and elements that we build upon are temporary they are arbitrary they come rearticulated disarticulated into different formations that is a very powerful resources for radical democratic practice </S1>
<S2> this reminds a bit i mean i'm i'm not going to be nasty but this reminds me a bit about er what the the great german er marxist philosopher ernst bloch once said he said <READING ALOUD> everything that is in the superstructure is al- also in the base except for the base </READING ALOUD> <S1> @@ </S1> okay , er , why did er you cut out that sentence i quoted about giddens </S2>
<S1> er you know er [(xx)] </S1>
<S2> [i think] it was actually very good you [know] </S2>
<S1> [it was] er well er , i sent out my copy out for copy (xx) among colleagues and , i found out that people were coming hard on me on that aspect that extension <S2> uh-huh </S2> and probably i cut this related to deleting that aspect for fear of finding myself in an uncop- in an uncomfortable situation like today having to justify <S2> @@ </S2> @i did that but@ </S1>
<S2> @but now but now you have to justify it nevertheless@ </S2>
<S1> yes yes yes well i mean it was my initial that's is exactly my initial thoughts on the issue and as it goes through friends and colleagues and their advice you end up , well if most of my friends are saying i should drop it why don't i to be on the safer side and it's always better as we say in journalism that when you're not sure you simply drop it <S2> [@@] </S2> [you don't have to (xx) accountable you you would have to @@] </S1>
<S2> so this was a journalist not a researcher then </S2>
<S1> well @@ <SS> @@ </SS> it was er i i borrowed a strategy from journalism <S2> @@ </S2> @to to to drop it@ and be safe and probably when i subsequently come to write i might be (xx) now if i have to write without the fear of facing (xx) for my writing and i guess this will probably be the last time i will find myself having to formally justify my thought probably in my @life@ <S2> @@ </S2> in my subsequent @writings@ @@ @you can only respond to (read) by also writing back and i write back@ </S1>
<S2> but on the other hand you make quite a lot of reference to giddens and particularly in relation to agency and structure </S2>
<S1> yeah he he giddens' sociology for sure theoretically very powerful <S2>  uh-huh </S2> (edifice) in the sense that he actually allows us to to to have a certain understanding that er previous writings don't actually give but unfortunately like , my problem with giddens and actually when i initially started this project , actually i was sure or i i told myself our enemy is structuration theory as a method , and it wasn't easy i think i spent six months struggling with that and the moment of truth finally hit me and i told myself that probably i may have to rethink , er structuration theory is beautiful in fact a a colleague told me this that giddens is wonderful but he doesn't do any empirical study so <S2> @@ </S2> you have to remember that and i it hit me hard that yeah theoretically structuration is very wonderful but when if i really have to do a empirical study i would be hard hit trying to point out how it operates so i abandoned it but then i had already invested a lot of time and energy in both reading and writing on giddens and no doubt giddens' theory has is always in me is always part of my thinking and it shapes the way i write even in articulation theory <S2> mhm </S2> that's why he features prominently in my thought </S1>
<S2> well i do think that you're absolutely right that it actually shapes your way of thinking and your analysis in many ways and we can return to that particularly when it comes to er we come to the question of the nation and the state <S1> uh-huh </S1> (because there) you had some references to to giddens which i find quite interesting , and i think that we shall we shall er , we shall continue that discussion then and i do think that also the way that you develop articulation theory you are quite influenced by giddens particularly when it comes to the question of articulation and structuration which you yourself actually point out to and i think that's maybe one of the areas where (your) way of interpreting er mouffe and er laclau is is actually better than what they do themselves you know , because i do think there is a certain degree of rigour in their way of thinking which you are actually opening up and i i find that useful so , er i would then move on to what is in many ways er one of the absolutely most interesting parts of your er dissertation and which i also do think that , is er one of the reasons why so many of us actually are here today namely the question of development theory where i do think that your way of describing er the paradigms of development theory in many places in your dissertation and it ends up with your reference to colin sparks on page 148 and 149 and it's very er succinct er summing up of the various stages in communication development theory in the book which unfortunately was print er published in india so not so many of us have had the opportunity to read it but er , er but let me let me ask you er start by asking you a question , er on the way that you you go on about describing this and i'm now going to read this with er should i call it a hermeneutic way of reading your dissertation and also with looking at your sympathies and er antipathies in your description of er of er the development development theory , i read a certain sympathy in the way you describe daniel lerner <S1> yeah , [i] </S1> [can] i i i think that when you go to for instance page 40 and page 49 where you actually write about lerner , and let's go to page four- er er 41st there you there you write <READING ALOUD> lerner assumes that communication systems are both indicators and agents of social change , the change always takes place in one direction namely from oral to mediated communications systems </READING ALOUD> and then you go on er , but you also write then that the transmission model of communication which you say that lerner actually uses which obviously he does you're still you're still writing about this as if you have a certain sympathy with the way he's writing about it , and that comes out even clearly in 49 on page 49 when you write <READING ALOUD> unlike schramm's work that was later to follow lerner does bother with the subject of the local state's agency in the constitution of modernisation , but he reads this in a troubling way , that is the personal feats of individual leaders and not the state as a machinery of power with distributive ability that responds to the various social forces that it represents </READING ALOUD> and i'm i'm very intrigued by this because i do think that in many of the sort of second-hand descriptions and er of what dan daniel lerner actually thinks and wrote er we tend to forget the kind of er ambivalence that exist in his work , do you have any comments on this </S2>
<S1> yes er well i can tell you that for any student who had to go through undergraduate studies of development communications one of the bibles you had to actually read is daniel lerner's book and somehow he tends to figure out as somebody whose work actually single-handedly founded a field or provided a seed for the expansion of the (xx) so for that matter er i do share some er er i'm most sympathetic to the way he writes on this issue because probably if there is a book that actually founded my interest it is this was when it happened and so i'm very sympathetic and i read him more seriously and er not on secondary level analysis , because er despite the fact that daniel lerner , (xx) as more inclined towards a riot in communication development communication scholarship , and there's no doubt it's not a secret that in development communication scholarship writers tend to be added on the left or on the right and you can easily tell and daniel lerner well happened to be on the wrong side of the divide , i tended to think that he probably provides us one of the first instances of a more detailed comprehensive analysis despite its objections (xx) we could say that yes he he tried to be very very neutral in terms of looking at issues in development and what it happens , he we find in his work for me and more new ones and less politicised arguments than for example we'll find er when i compare him to er his er contemporary er <S2> schramm </S2> schramm <S2> mhm </S2> in schramm we find a more politicised arguments and i found that to be more distancing so yes i have a sympathetic reading of daniel lerner and more so because he gives us certain detailed analysis of what actually happens at the at the grassroot at the level of state and development , now er my goodness if i <S2> [@@] </S2> [(got)] your question right </S1>
<S2> no i mean the reason why i i started the daniel lerner is because now i would like you us to go through to to the paradigms together and see how you view this because i do think this is very interesting by the way you are abso- you are actually concentrating your analysis of these paradigms around one essential factor namely the the role of the state and the way the paradigms look at the state and i think that's a very interesting way of criticising development paradigms , now i i think you are actually on to something very very important and i think that's why what you write about daniel lerner in relationship to to schramm is so important , but now then we go on i'll give you all another quote which is not from a school on the right but on a from a school on the left namely the dependency school the dependistas on page 47 at the very bottom you write <READING ALOUD> but whereas the radicalism of the dependency school inspired a lot of intellectual work on communication and development theory its purchase purchase on policy circles was minimal if not totally null , this was partly because fundamentally absent in the dependency theory were feasible guidelines for practical policy on the way forward apart from the overkill recommendation to de-link or uncouple from the global capitalist economy as a basis for development , thus the relevance of dependency theory to the area of communication and development may be limited to only providing what i may describe as an intellectual inspiration to evolve other theories and paradigms notably the up and coming multiplicity paradigm </READING ALOUD> and then er you fur- further up you say that er er that the dependistas also had a complete disregard for the role of the state and particularly the national state <S1> yeah </S1> and i think that you i mean this is rather strong words <S1> [yes] </S1> [for] for a school on the left that you actually should be sympathetic to isn't it </S2>
<S1> yes <S2> @@ </S2> yes it is it is it is probably the er probably the biggest error in the left i'm (myself) in the left in terms of er theorising development issues especially in the 1960s and 70s and even 80s but (what we) see is the fact that theories of imperialism had actually colonised and (left this in marginal sort of) extent that all that we are looking for is to see the relationship of how er capitalism is actually going to destroy the colonies right out from slavery to colonialism to postcol- and how new colonialism or new imperialist structures are (objected) to , now what we fail to look at and actually that is also one of the , was a fact that at a local level we fail to look at what was going on , that the state the postcolonial state we assumed to (go on) unproblematic was actually very very problematic in the sense that it was a dictatorship it was a state that actually abused its citizens it was a state that allowed people like for example mobutu and and his generation to become multibillionaire capitalists <S2> mhm </S2> without a left , making aware about those developments , the left was blinded to these developments and that is precisely probably that made me to make the strong critique of the dependistas school of school , how come that there were some of these elements in developing countries how come that they wouldn't write about the fact that those who occupied the state institutions in developing countries are actually no different , they are not just er er er er petty bourgeois er ca- type of or comprador bourgeois as it was er easily called they are actually er er er er er er er capitalists who were building up empires in (xx) and how come we didn't know that and how come there was such an overlap , and this has probably provoked me to make such a very strong critique of the dependency (study) </S1>
<S2> well i sympathise a lot with you i usually call this kind of attitude that we found in the 60s and the 70s in relation to dictatorships on the left er i call that er policy of shifting eyes <S1> @@ </S1> you know er every time we were (xx) were s- told that we know that there are these dictators that development dictators and they are abusing human rights , he shifted er over (glance) and he said well but they increase er lit- the literacy rate you know , and this is this is this is a very serious critique of the left and i <S1> [yeah] </S1> [think] you're absolutely right in making it , on the other hand i do think it's very paradoxical and i think that might have been something that you might have pointed out that people who actually call themselves marxist and profess to be marxist and actually were </S2>
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<S1> is going on in the postcolony to be heard and i don't think that if for example you were to submit an abstract to a conference where you went to address (xx) issues you wouldn't even be invited because the paradigm the the paradigm then was poisoned by the fact that the world was bipolar <S2> mhm </S2> and once that happens it's difficult for anybody to think beyond this <S2> mhm  </S2> and that was probably one of the defining characteristics why we we have such a er undertheorising of the postcolonial fate <S2> mhm </S2> and secondary in the postcolony itself if (xx) in the centre where (xx) by the division between east and west those in the postcolony itself it turns out that er in the postcolony the best for every educated elite the most prized and best job was to work with the state <S2> mhm </S2> and take part in the <S2> [mhm] </S2> [plunder] and so if these people would have opportunity to come out to the west to engage in conferences the last discussion they will want to bring is about the fact that his position is a (parasitic) one and that he plunders the state to form a er private profit or a private empire , so from this west of developed countries you had this problem of bipolarity and within the developing countries had this problem of personally involved themselves and so they are not going to come out and write about a fact that there was such an illegitimate aspect of the state in the postcolony </S1>
<S2> mhm , you move on from er your analysis and er characterisation of the dependistas to er the what you could call the multi- multidisciplinary or alternative paradigm or whatever [it's called] <S1> [multiplicity] paradigm </S1> yeah it's called a lot of things actually <S1> @yeah@ </S1> alternative grassroots <S1> [grassroots] </S1> [et cetera] et cetera <S1> yeah yeah </S1> and you particularly make reference to maybe the latest outshot of that school namely jan servaes who you also criticise quite heavily <S1> yeah </S1> particularly also in relation to this period because he doesn't he disregards the state <S1> yeah </S1> and then you conclude in many ways when it comes to comes to this er discussion and this is on page 52 er <COUGH> <READING ALOUD> i am raising these apparent limitations on standard literature to point out that there seemed to be what i will call a blind spot of a theory of state in development communication and this is where i'm making an intervation intervention , obviously there is an explanation for this oversight </READING ALOUD> and then you go on er , but i mean are you actually now proposing to make er new paradigm </S2>
<S1> no i think their paradigms are not formed by any people (xx) i would be [happy] <S2> [well] i'm not so certain of that actually </S2> @@ @so i'll be happy to invent (such an) argument obviously@ , but what i'm trying to do and (i'm proud to say) that peopl- it would take a generation of scholars to achieve , what i've tried to do as a first step is to actually try to point out the inadequacies in (graphical) attempt and in fact if there was w- this particular part of the project i i write (and i'm) very passionate about the argument because i thought that it is something that i needed (a belt) to go on top of the building and shout to everybody look listen this is a situation we are facing <S2> mhm </S2> we need to move ahead from here and don't look at the past the past was not so good and i , thought if i'm able to do that i will consider it as my contribution and then we'll have to move in and then we'll start to look at what actually goes on in the state in the postcolony , what is actually going on in those who occupy , institutions of the state like i do in the chapter on the national communication authority <S2> mhm </S2> or telecom regulations and it is only if we start to look at the micro practices at a state level then we can actually tell what the state means and what theories can we write about the state , i will not be able to have that concluded now but for initiating such an approach i think that is enough as my (human's) job </S1>
<S2> well i i think you're @@ i think you're on to something very very important i think that and we're going to discuss this a bit further and really come into what is being signified by working with a state and what a co- postcolonial state is et cetera but let me continue a bit more more with development communication and development paradigm er theory of paradigms , if you go to your pag- er your description of one the (theorisations) that you actually write about with great admiration namely escobar <S1> oh </S1> and but still you end up criticising him as well <S1> well </S1> and the reason for that is precisely partly that he doesn't really have a theory of the state either and that the state sort of vanishes away in the way that he anal- analyses discourse , then my question would be i mean as he's actually analysing discourse is it because discourse that he analyses doesn't have the state or is it because he doesn't have the state </S2>
<S1> well he is he escobar is great in the sense that he (really on ) (xx) development and how it has come to become part of our vocabulary <S2> mhm </S2> but he is a victim of a methodology he is a victim of his foucauldian approach <S2> mhm </S2> escobar takes refuge in foucault <S2> mhm </S2> and foucault doesn't give us any theory of the state </S1>
<S2> true <S1> his concept [of] </S1> [he he] he gives us a theory of the power <S1> power </S1> without state <S1> without state </S1> very problematic right </S2>
<S1> yes so obviously , like we do not , er er er expect foucault until he breaks out from his foucauldian mould he would not be able to make any progress on telling us about how power operates within the state , and this this was my frustration with escobar <S2> mhm </S2> because if you actually take escobar seriously at the point you really think that this is it he's very right and then you conclude and say and so what , where when you go from this after unpacking development and for you to write such a marvellous book without telling us the situation about the state in the postcolony i thought that was frustrating enough but there's no doubt escobar's contribution is fundamental to our understanding of development and probably will remain so for several years to come , it's just that i didn't get what i wanted </S1>
<S2> @@ may i continue this a bit in relation to to er er , to er positioning escobar in er in er relation to your er cultural studies theories and particularly to stuart hall because stuart hall like escobar is very much influenced by foucault <S1> mhm </S1> and when i read escobar and i was thinking a lot of stuart hall particularly in relation to the use of concepts like hybridisation hybridity et cetera which er are concepts that stuart hall also uses all the time <S1> mhm </S1> and i remember and i'm going to ask you this as you are an african yourself i remember that i once used this in relation to a discussion i had with a zimbabwean colleague and friend and i used the question of hybridity and he was and hybridisation and he became very angry and he said this is a racist term <S1> @@ </S1> can you commen- can you comment [on that] </S2>
<S1> [you know] you know er there's one aspect of this work that i (favoured to) spend more time on was the fact that the way , er in africa we have actually quite so much of writings on that tends to think of culture in ideas of authenticity as something that is actually pure this is a pure african society <S2> mhm </S2> and what we have to understand in social theory whether we are discussing africa or we are discussing finland or europe or any part is that culture has never been authentic there is nothing as that pure state of culture out there and so this is where we have to understand that in so far as human societies have ever existed human beings have always engaged in what (xx) prefer to call a (bricolage) <S2> mhm </S2> bringing pieces together to constitute culture , and er er er er so that obviously i will consider the generation of africa african scholars who are uncomfortable talking about hybridity as people belonging to the dying generation because obviously what is very unique about every culture practices is the fact that it is er , collection it is a (xx) it is a hybrid and i'll give you a very finnish story that i experienced (during) (xx) the early days of my coming to finland that a friend of mine said he'd take me to spend christmas with his family and i went there in a suit and a tie actually we arrived there and the parents told they wanted to see me in african dress <S2> @@ </S2> i said this was african the suit and the tie <S2> yeah </S2> they started laughing they thought i was kidding and i wasn't kidding and i tell you why because shortly afterwards she said me the mom my host they were a wonderful family she gave me coffee coffee and said it's finnish to give coffee to our guests and i laughed i said where in finland do you grow coffee <S2> @@ </S2> @how can coffee be finnish culture that's@ , well that was just it made fun we all made fun and laughed but taking that seriously er seriously then we begin to see how we may have to (xx) at what point did coffee , because one of the few places that coffee grows up in the world is either in africa or in latin america it doesn't grow up there's no coffee tree in europe , so that we can say that at what point did finnish mobilise coffee into its culture to form genuine finnish culture as serving coffee or at what point did the tropical african man adopt a suit and a tie <SS> @@ </SS> to it is authentic africa , so that physically culture then is these practices of appropriations <S2> mhm </S2> and reformulations <S2>  mhm </S2> and if my african colleagues are rejecting hybridity probably their students will welcome it in future </S1>
<S2> i think that you're absolutely right there's er as my norwegian colleague in bergen <NAME> has termed it er he's termed as something that the culture the world is dominated by cultural disorder <S1> yeah </S1> and that means that you know i mean the biggest rap one of the biggest rap communities in the world is in the senegal for instance <S1> yeah </S1> which i think is a fascinating <S1>  development </S1> development yes <S1> @@ </S1> , you also write in relation to escobar which i think is important because that is linked to when i said i wanted to put this in the framework also of stuart hall you hint that this discursive theory sort of make reality disappear <S1> mhm yeah yeah yeah </S1> we cannot just argue that the so-called poor countries are not poor after all <S1> yeah </S1> because i mean that that there's only a discourse it's not a reality </S2>
<S1> well er i don't know the relation between discourse and reality like i tend to point out it is a fact that , in philosophy we say that idealism and materiality are not actually different they are actually in a continuum <S2> mhm  </S2> and (it depends at what point does) ideas will ideas acquire material substance in the end and become material and it is at the heart of the discussion and you see from that point it is i get that point i get to that point that after following mouffe and laclau <S2> mhm </S2> and actually point out that stuart hall is very uncomfortable with the way that mouffe and laclau (force) the discussion to a point where we lose materiality and everything remain discourse <S2> mhm </S2> and i say that yeah that is probably true but what the only true about it is the fact that we are so used to the tactile nature of materiality that we are very uncomfortable when we are pushed to the slippery end of discourse <S2>  mhm </S2> but precisely i don't want to think that as a distinction between discourse and materiality i only think that materiality is constituted out of discourse , and in that <S2> [or the other way around] </S2> [process] in that processes we jump out from the (divide) [(xx)] </S1>
<S2> [what about] what about the other way around that discourse is constructed out of materiality </S2>
<S1> yes and then the other way around and that is sort of (sitting) down and saying that this is material and this is discourse and then you push it a bit out of materiality you lose its touch with it , then we have to ask ourselves at what at what point our discourse , (gets) people to act <S2>  mhm </S2> and create the material and then for me i want to follow mouffe and laclau in their discussion [and stuart hall] <S2> [i hope that i] hope that </S2> and sort of stuart hall @@ </S1>
<S2> well er i i sort of had a suspicion that that was the case yes <S1> @@ </S1> er , let me also then ask you another question in relation to this because i think that's quite essential in relation to also what i feel is one of the problems and i hint to that in my description of your dissertation , the danger of eclecticism when you approach er approach this area in the way that you do , and i do think that er stuart hall is eclectic <S1> mhm </S1> i really do i think i i admire him a lot i think <S1> [yeah] </S1> [that] he's a wonderful writer a wonderful speaker <S1> [speaker] </S1> [and] everything like that and he's got very great insights but methodologically and theoretically he's eclectic <S1> mhm that's true </S1> and he's too eclectic , are you in danger of becoming eclectic </S2>
<S1> well you see one of the interesting aspect about method is that and probably and it becomes one of the problems of the academia is that we are always forced to bring up a method and the pain is that methods tend to determine their outcome of what we do <S2> mhm </S2> and in struggling with that we tend to become eclectic sometimes you really want to get out of the determinate effect of methods <S2> mhm </S2> and actually do what you think is right <S2> mhm </S2> or what you think you want to write about but once in a while you have to remember that there's this institutional investment in method when even it becomes a standard law that when you do a dis- er er d- (petition) of a doctoral dissertation the opponent starts with the method , method is so foundational to academic work unfortunately we've come to a stage where we begin to think that there's sometimes actually er there's an there's a (determinate) effect of method on thoughts and how do you overcome that so once in a while you find yourself jumping out and coming back because of the institutional investment on method so yes probably that will explains what cause attitude and bias , stuart hall has refused to be identified as an academic <S2> mhm </S2> because he thinks he's an intellectual not an academic because once you get into that academic straitjacket <S2> mhm </S2> your production tends to be determined <S2> mhm </S2> by certain institutionally invested practices <S2> mhm </S2> like celebrating method in research , yes so but we (come) (xx) method we still have to use it but once in a while we have to make a move and if that makes us sound eclectic mhm [so be it] </S1>
<S2> [@@] okay <S1> [@@] </S1> [er let let me also then] and now we're coming back to the question i said i wanted to discuss me and you or rather that you may be wanted to discuss with me namely about the question of modernising <S1> yeah </S1> and i am going to quote you here from page 75 in relation to what you write about escobar <READING ALOUD>  the idea of modernisation that modernisation has lots of good things to offer may have been externally introduced through the development discourse but the rural and urban poor in africa asia and latin america have internalised these truths and even if we throw out the development ap- apparatus with its agents the development discourse that escobar deconstructed will still go on </READING ALOUD> are you moderniser at heart </S2>
<S1> well i think that i wouldn't actually thi- thi- this this is first time i'm being described as a critic- critical moderniser and i er i don't know whether i should agree to that but <S2> [but you you you you] </S2> [i will not] i will not oppose to that but i'm not sure if i should approve it but i'm not actually going to oppose it , yes modernisation we must i think i mean you cannot tell me that if modernity brings medication for malaria we should say it's modern and we don't have to take it , no , and i raise that issue in the discussion <S2> mhm mhm </S2> if modernity (xx) the convenience of transport and communication why not and in any case to abandon modernisation is invariable to abandon the nation state and you and me will agree that any talk of abandoning nation state is going to result in a discourse on the discussions abandoning nation state will result in the material destruction of the nation state there will be a lot of violence for us , so yes i am a moderniser of a sort but i'm not very sure (actually) exactly what type [@@] </S1>
<S2> [@@] </S2>
<SS> [@@] </SS>
<S2> i i actually i couldn't agree more with you and i i tell you why because one of the reasons why i'm very frustrated nowadays when also in our field everyone talks about the disappearance of the nation state and the coming of the superstate of europe et cetera and also that the you know globalisation brings down the nation state they forgot one very essential things and that is that our rights as citizens are generated through us being citizens <S1> [mhm mhm] </S1> [of a state] we're not i mean you in finland not me in os- in norway you in finland <S1> @@ </S1> i'm not citizens of europe you're citizens of finland and it's very very important because that's where our rights are <S1> yeah yeah </S1> and i i also think that you're absolutely right about when the state disintegrates it's something that is [really really dangerous] <S1> [(xx)] dangerous </S1> and that's why i also think that weak states are <S1> [(xx)] </S1> [dangerous states] and that's one of the problems about the the current thinking about the rolling back of the state in relation to <S1> [yeah] </S1> [(development)] so i'm absolutely in agreement with you there and i think that you discuss this in a very admirable manner in your dissertation particularly while when you criticise among others er goran hyden or heiden as he's called in <S1> [oh yeah] </S1> [english] who whose er man- in many ways i think er there is , interesting and also quite insightful analysis of african society <S1> yeah  </S1> on the question of the way what he analyses is very fine but when he comes to the conclusions he draws <S1> [no] </S1> [it's] it's not <S1> no it's not </S1> , but if we then move on and i think that what you're also bringing out which is very important in relation to this and it's important in relation to the question of communication policies and media policies and also telecom policies and you show that very succin- succinctly namely that these states these weak states that we deal with in africa and they are actually states that are parasitical <S1> [mhm] </S1> [and] clientelist and it (xx) into the area of telecom policies you are pointing that out in a very very fine manner and er as you may know the norwegian telecom company telenor is very heavily into ghana </S2>
<S1> well it now controls if , you may all know to the [extent (xx)] </S1>
<S2> [and i] and i don't think they're uncorrupt you know <S1> [@@] </S1> [they] they think they are themselves but i don't think they are </S2>
<SS> [@@] </SS>
<S1> [@@] well er if if you may care to know that i found out that i was getting an opening from norway i just threw my hands into the eyes sky and said now the norwegians have colonised my country's <S2> [@@] </S2> [telecom] and they are now bringing <S2> [@@] </S2> [somebody] to colonise my thought <S2> [@@] </S2><SS> [@@] </SS> that was too much for me then <S2> [@@] </S2> [but of course] @i know@ professor <NAME> 's (way) again i thought well probably he's not going to be like telenor , telenor currently is the administrator of ghana telecom that is the largest telecom infrastructure in ghana <S2> mhm </S2> it now administers it and we are having a new form of nordic colonisation of west africa <S2> it's true </S2> whether it is coming through globalisation or not it does unfortunately but my opponent is not a colonist @@ </S1>
<S2> well er you refer to giddens on page 61 and you say that he presents four types of nation states based on the nature of state formation <S1> mhm </S1> <READING ALOUD> his first two are the classical nation state principally defined by the dominant european experience of nation corresponding to state , and the colonised nation state with US canada australia and israel being their immediate examples , and the postcolonial and the modernising nation states are the third and fourth types that er giddens offers  </READING ALOUD> and then you go on a bit further down by making reference to chatterjee and you say that and you say that <READING ALOUD> the postcolonial nation state is by definition a modernising one </READING ALOUD> <S1> yeah it is </S1> but what about the relationship to the other ones (aren't they) modernising ones </S2>
<S1> er , no , i mean for example the first er </S1>
<S2> i mean the let's look let's look at the at european nation states , first of all i do question both giddens and you in relation to saying that (no) european states are nations they became nations and there still are difficult problems here and i will refer to something which is happening in relation to this which i think would have been very interesting in in the perspective of your analysis of the state , if you look at a country like spain <S1> yeah </S1> which was a very centralised state under the fascist dictatorship <S1> yeah </S1> which is now becoming a revolutionary state with very very strong er regional indep- autonomy , and the reason for that is obviously because it has joined europe <S1> mhm </S1> where it is possible to have regional autonomy in a very different manner from what was er possible in the pre-european phase of the the s- spanish development , and is that then a nation state or what is spain in er a configuration like this </S2>
<S1> i , in my actually didn't when i was thinking on the european experience of nation states and african experience actually they're not think along these lines rather what i started to think about is that in europe we have two kinds of states or nation states states that came from empires states that evolved to be from kingdoms to become nation states or er if you may care to know that it is only recently that the british started to think of themselves as having , being a nation state </S1>
<S2> well i mean at the moment the british are not thinking of themselves as a nation <S1> [they] </S1> [state] the scots are moving away the <S1> [@they have@] </S1> [welsh] are moving away </S2>
<S1> @they have started@ sort of the procedure for swearing citizenship for the first time this year so that you are sworn as a citizen and the british have always thought that they are not a nation state they are beginning this (xx) practices to admit that yes they are actually no more an empire and there is nothing great about britain that they are just another nation state , now i have always thought about european nation states as two the empire to nation and then the postcolonial states like in finland where it emerges as the fact that a st- a state becomes instrumental in organising a particular form of society to become a nation state , and yes that is and i picked that argument from er erm er er , (probably giddens') social mobilisation by by er (xx) er </S1>
<S2> i mean <S1> [there's this he he gives then he he] </S1> [i i i'm i'm happy that you are you are] that you are following me in the in the progress of alzheimer you know i mean it's </S2>
<S1> oh no @@ you you know what i've tried to say is that er er karl deutsch actually <S2> ah </S2> i was struggling to remember <S2> excellent man </S2> yes <S2> excellent man </S2> yes yes i was my disc- my understanding of european nations' formation is actually based in his discussion <S2> okay </S2> where he tries to point out that er swiss nationalism was only possible because of the multilingual facility of radio <S2> okay </S2> and i think that it tends to work out that way and those having to struggle with languages have to could actually form from being an empire to nation state , now i did not put a lot of thought into thinking of them as modernising as you are putting it now but i've always read habermas' discussion that you cannot replicate modernity modernity is in europe and that's it <S2> oh </S2> and that , those who claim modernisation are performing a sort of er er (xx) articulation on the idea of modernity and then charles taylor (comes to) say no no no no no in quebec we have a modernising state in africa we have a modernising state , so this discussion actually (informs) the way i distance myself from my (xx) (thinking) deeply into european experience of nationalism but to just say that in africa , for us we think of the postcolonial state <S2> mhm </S2> as a modernising state , i do not have much to talk about the european ex- experience and , well it is not my (province) of topic </S1>
<S2> no but i think you're in on to something very important <S1> [mhm yeah] </S1> [that's why] i wanted to raise this with you , er if you're goin- and as you mention er habermas i think that one of the strengths about habermas' way of looking and that's why i think it's very important to distinguish between modernising theory as a development theory and habermas theory of modernity <S1> mhm </S1> as being two entirely distinct theories because his theory is a theory which is linked to an historical analysis of how modernity came about and as he writes in a very famous article modernity to him is an unfinished project <S1> mhm </S1> while modernisation theory is a theory which is very much linked to how to modernise <S1> yeah </S1> rather than to analyse what brought about modernisation <S1> [mhm] </S1> [and in] that perspective i do think that you're right in saying that the postcolonial state is a <S1> [modernising state] </S1> [modernising state] but it's not something that you can link to habermas' analysis of how modernity came about </S2>
<S1> well i thought when i first read habermas my experience was that he was jealously guarding the european experience of modernity and wouldn't want to transport it to other parts because and theoretically very right of course and justified but emotionally i had this feeling that yeah he's european too that's why he's writing like that <S2> @@ </S2> @this is not actually a theory@ but this is and (why i'm interested) about er theorising and er paradigms like articulation is to start to think that you can actually expose the way you read a theory from your emotional feeling that you art- what you (brought) to it , yes i read his text very well he didn't say that but i could read that emotionally , this is how he thinks about it then i looked at charles taylor who actually <S2> [mhm] </S2> [grows up] in postcolonial canada and then he actually makes the point that no there are several modernities actually and er the experience in canada and quebec are actually examples of er modernising state (xx) , i found my heart going towards charles taylor if <S2> [well] </S2> [probably] because i shared the same city with him when i was writing this how he lives actually in montreal [and i (xx)] </S1>
<S2> [i'm i'm] also very sympathetic <S1> [@@] </S1> [towards charles taylor] and i think that the debate between charles taylor and jurgen habermas is one the most interesting debates on identity for instance which is something which is very very se- essential in relation to this so i think that you're absolutely right and i think that the way that you make reference to charles taylor is very useful and very enlightening in your in your dissertation so , but let me then move on to the to something which is also at the heart of this namely the tension between the nation and the state <S1> yeah </S1> on page 217 you write <READING ALOUD> the tension between the state and the nation and the claim of the latter to represent former has been discussed throughout this project </READING ALOUD> </S2>
<S1> excuse me can you tell me the page </S1>
<S2> page 217 <S1> thanks </S1> at the very end <READING ALOUD> it is a tension that becomes obvious in the practice of communication policy , the unavoidable question then is one of representation what constituency does the state represent , by articulating a legitimacy of representation what epistemic and political violence does the state perpetrate on the nation , i am asking this question these questions in lieu of a conclusion in order to hint at the theoretical possibilities of embarking on a follow-up research on the tension between the claim of the state and the reality of the nation </READING ALOUD> and it is in a way quite characteristic of your dissertation that you ask this very important question at the very end in lieu of a conclusion , but now you have a chance to give some thoughts to us about it </S2>
<S1> yeah yeah yeah i here again i have only those thoughts about this <S2>  well then you give us them </S2> i i it may (xx) i'll have to get over it again , but actually it's a very disturbing relationship that if you live in the postcolony as i did for most of my life you always ask yourself so what use is the state it takes taxes , it spends , it it doesn't listen to its constituents it's it spends most of the time listening to the world bank and the IMF and these are banks they are dealing money how to ma- make money they are not interested in citizenship they are not interested in development even if they say so , so why is the state doing this so that it comes to this question comes up all the time probably very difficult to answer simply because you cannot just damn the postcolonial state at the same time its practices are disheartening you ask yourself all this time why is the state , er (doing all this to us) even though in theory it (propounds) it builds its illegitimacy upon the idea of a development planning system where it is supposed to (imply) development , and if you look through ghana's political or (presidential) statements right down from 1957 to today , year in year out one thing you hear is less sacrifice and build a better future and the better future never arrives and people live there all their life , so these questions come up and they are very they are very difficult questions i do not have the answers now but i think that it's going to shift the way i think , these particular real life situation practices actually i wouldn't want to say the postcolonial state should be damned that's the last thing i would do as we understand but i also have a very ambivalent attitude towards it (save) that i do not know how to resolve the <S2> mhm </S2> er confusion or the conflict <S2> mhm </S2> i'm not very sure </S1>
<S2> you know a nigerian friend of mine once said you know <NAME> the only time that nigeria is a nation is when the eagles play </S2>
<S1> when the eagles play <S2> yeah </S2> yeah yeah well soccer is </S1>
<S2> [soccer is actually it's actually the national , glue right] </S2>
<SS> [@@] </SS>
<S1> [@@] yeah yeah is true it's true </S1>
<S2> maybe that's the same in ghana you've got a quite a [good team] </S2>
<S1> [well in] this maybe in nigeria (xx) because they were (xx) soccer to represent a nation in ghana our soccer is disarray so probably the state has <SIC> losed </SIC> one of its instruments of bringing the citizens together because these days the ghanaian soccer is not performing well and it that case i would think that the state is losing one of its most strategic resource , soccer </S1>
<S2> well er you also make reference in relation to this to basil davidson's fam- fabulous book black man's burden <S1> mhm </S1> which actually uses a lot of the emp- empirical data from the formation of ghana <S1> ghana yeah </S1> and where one of his points is that the nation state and i think that a quotation mark is called for in this is something that was forced upon africa rather than (xx) to africa </S2>
<S1> yeah , that is only way a nation state was only way we could we could be incorporated into modernity it was the only vehicle by which ghanaians could share the globe <S2> mhm </S2> you will need a the nation state as a structure to open embassies across the world you need to travel under ghanaian passport <S2> mhm </S2> you need a nation state to protect you from others so yes it was forced upon and the other alternatives to the nation state were probably kingdoms and tribal empires and these were utterly devastated by the experience of slavery and colonialism (saying) that at a time that the nation state at a time of independence <S2> mhm </S2> their option of pursuing a nation state was probably the only viable option open to developing countries , well the price the developing countries are paying for is quite heavy and continue to pay <S2>  mhm </S2> but probably basil davidson gives us a very disheartening story that makes you start thinking do we need the nation state and for me i think the answer is always yes yes yes we need it because that is probably the only way ghanaians or any other or for that matter nigerians can relate to the world because in the global committee of nations there isn't like global committee of individuals you always have to have a certain national identity before you can relate to the globe and if there's a price you must pay , (maybe that's it) </S1>
<S2> i i agree with you and i but i do think that this is very important to be aware of the doubleness or the ambivalence about it <S1> yeah </S1> and i also do think that maybe one thing which you as you said you you're going to discuss this later in your work [because] </S2>
<S1> [yeah] it is it is it's a very disturbing question and [not resolved] </S1>
<S2> [yeah] yeah maybe it's er important to relate the question of the nation state to what you could call the territorial state , that a state is a territory <S1> mhm-hm </S1> which encompasses those who are within the territory <S1> mhm </S1> and as you one of the african researchers that you refer to and whom i also have learned a lot from namely mahmood mamdani <S1> yes </S1> has pointed out that how do you actually er designate citizenship in modern africa with all these people on the move who actually are stateless people <S1> mhm </S1> who are without rights because they're stateless people i mean look at the situation in south africa <S1> yeah </S1> where there probably are about as many er up to ten million people living without proper rights in the country in which they live <S1> yeah </S1> does that mean that one should be citizens of somewhere where one is born or should one be citizen of somewhere where one lives i mean this is a very important question to be asked and it's a question which is important in africa but it's also certainly important here in europe , and this has to do with territory nation origin <S1> mhm </S1> identities <S1> mhm it has </S1> and it has a lot to do with communication </S2>
<S1> very much i agree on that </S1>
<S2> so i think that you know you raise a question which is absolutely essential <S1> mhm </S1> and it has implications far beyond ghana <S1> mhm </S1> so i think this is very important , you also mention and this is something that i'd like to continue with you make reference on page 90 to francis nyamnjoh <S1> mhm </S1> and his very interesting er discussions of classes or let's say social group form formations in relation to the state in africa and i think francis nyamnjoh is a very important er theoretician and researcher in this context because he has also written on the role of media and democracy he's not only written on class formations he's a sociologist originally but he has also worked that and now you know he works in (xx) so <S1> mhm </S1> and if you if you make this discussion of his three groups in relation to the state the peasants which are the majority and then those who are in the middle <S1> [mhm] </S1> [sort of] you know the er (xx) proletariat and those manage to eke out a living and then the real sort of you know the the those who are in the state as such and related to the state even if then the private sector because one of the points he makes is that interesting relationship between the state and the private sector in the postcolonial state , what do you think about this in relation to identity and nation </S2>
<S1> <SIGH> identity well [i i] </S1>
<S2> [i mean] are the peasants i mean i think that you when you started this discussion you said that to the ordinary people in ghana the state is just someone who takes our taxes <S1> yeah </S1> and puts us in jail you know i mean that's the state and there is no difference between the present state and the colonial state <S1> mhm </S1> in that they are as mamdani writes they are subjects they are not citizens </S2>
<S1> first of all i want to state that for me identity as i understand it is not something that is fixed , now people who like we all tend to choose our identities or reform our identities in context the peasantry as i understand i would base on my working experience as a news reporter and the fact that i have familiar ties with the peasantry in ghana is that they tend to define their identity in context there are times that they will live in a (convivial) relation with the state if that will bring them some immediate material benefits and you see this in display during multiparty elections when parties go to area- rural areas to raise campaigns and to to make rallies and talk to the people , if the people are sure that these politicians is coming in with some goods from the city they surely will come out and embrace and talk with him and go , now when they go back in their real peasant (moments) they do not see anything close to the state they see themselves as communities who live and the state is the person or that institution that takes them to jail but gives them nothing but takes taxes , so that s- identity then is always in the process of construction and reformulation is always in the process of being articulated in context vis-à-vis what are the options available , the peasants see themselves as ghanaians when it is appropriate for them to do that and benefit <S2> mhm </S2> probably when the national team is playing against another country yes they will begin to identify themselves emotionally with but as time goes on and the and the (find) about the football subsides they come back to the materialities and discover that actually the state hasn't helped them much in their current circumstances and there are the (viral) rural communities that is why they do not think that the state is the place they should take their cases to if they have differences they do not go to the courts they don't go to the police they will rather avoid these institutions because they do not see themselves as part of it </S1>
<S2> yeah absolutely , this brings us over to another question which you raised and which i think is the equally important and that is the role of the new role of the NGOs and particularly the international NGOs and you @make@ reference to DANIDA being established as an NGO in ghana and i think that was a real (holler) you know i mean a scream DANIDA being the now part of the ministry of foreign affairs in denmark being an NGO that is , but but anyway NGOs the role of NGOs in modern africa in relation to the new liberalisation paradigm and in relation to the state you make some very succinct er sharp criticism of the new role of NGOs but there's one thing which i i was actually wondering which you don't really make any reference to and that is the new communication and media NGOs which are coming very strong in africa <S1> yeah yeah </S1> you just talk about NGOs in general you don't make any reference to the communication NGOs and i would like you to say something about that because that's right in [(the area of dissertation)] </S2>
<S1> [actually] i would tell you this that part of the i didn't take them serious in the sense that when i went to ghana between er in 2002 for four months and came back in august i , i thought they are just (xx) on paper than in practice the communication NGOs <S2> mhm </S2> i did actually i wasn't looking for i (xx) see them in practice <S2> okay </S2> and they er and i and it's very (strongly) on the internet there is a very (strongly) on paper and you could see them how great they are but you really do not see them actually in practice and i didn't see and i wanted at least one communication NGO to profile and i didn't [with that] </S1>
<S2> [what you] what you think is the reason for that </S2>
<S1> er well the whole issue comes to the fact that to to (xx) one of the biggest one of the most fruitful ventures in ghana today is to form an NGO <S2> yes </S2> because the NGO is now an industry (within) the middle class as (xx) with the postcolonial state is now discovering if you are a civil servant you abandon your office you form an NGO you apply to FINNIDA DANIDA or any other s- finance agencies that you are in an NGO they fund you you open a foreign account you put some money there and you (continue) (xx) you go to conferences and tell what you are doing , i'm being sceptical because i didn't actually get convinced about their activities and let me put it this clearly NGOs some NGOs are doing fantastic work and i really was impressed about what they were doing but the argument the key argument i'm making my in this work this book is to say that NGOs can pack their bags and leave at any time they are not obliged to stay <S2> [mhm] </S2> [when the] crisis worsens the state is obliged to stay or perish with the people , and for that matter if the world bank now sees the NGOs as avenues for development it's a very troubling development because we have to demand the world bank that it is the state that must and should be at the centre of development issues , NGOs can come in and when it worsens they will pack their bags and go they are not actually mandated with a task of development it is the state and this is where i have er a sort of criticism against the tendency to position NGOs as as the world bank does these days in ghana as institutions that (must) actually promote development they do not have ghanaians to answer to <S2> mhm </S2> their their principals are living in europe and north america and that is not development </S1>
<S2> that's particularly true for the big international NGOs <S1> yeah </S1> and i think that's absolutely right but that also makes us er raise another question to which you allude but which you don't really go into and that is the distinction and i think it's necessary to uphold the distinction between NGOs and civil society , do you have any views on that </S2>
<S1> yeah it is a (part of a) discussion that i draw from the long lengthy (paragraph) that i dropped because i thought it is (worth) a different (article of his own) that is not (just) (xx) that is on tangent actually <S2> mhm </S2> was to make out the point that in the discussion of civil society we tend to position these N-O's as part of civil society <S2> mhm </S2> and er the the problem i had with such a discussion is that if the parliament in denmark approves the budget of NGOs in ghana how do you position that NGO as a civil as an institution in civil society , it is above the state because another state in europe approves its budget , how do you position such an institution as an NGO in ghana , no it is not it is not a part of civil society because it is not even part of the whole dynamic of nation and state state and civil society relation , this is the way i put it i haven't developed argument in [(xx) (but it was (xx) tangent)] </S1>
<S2> [but i i] i can throw that back at you and er actually as a way of supporting your argument i mean if you go to these nordic countries here you know i mean NGOs here are state institutions i mean most of them get most of their funds from er from the state anyway i mean <FOREIGN> mellemfolkeligt samvirke </FOREIGN> which is on of the big M-S which is one of the big NGOs in ghana gets all its funding from the danish state <S1> mhm-hm </S1> the norwegian red cross gets 90 per cent of its funding for its development work from the norwegian state , i mean that means that with the question of what is an NGO in relation to the state in our part of the world it is an equally important question as it is in your part of the world and i think the interlinkage the configuration of these two questions what is the state and what is an NGO in the question of north south it's very important <S1> mhm </S1> and i think you should look into writing <S1> [i will] </S1> [it that] article you know , because i think it's incredibly interesting i think it's very very important that what makes a distinction which is a distinction on an analytical and theoretical level between on the one hand the state and civil society and the market and then also make a practical analysis of what is the role of NGOs in these configurations <S1> mhm mhm </S1> because they belong to all three they're both part of the market and part of the state and part of civil society <S1> society yeah </S1> , okay you make we are going to go on a little bit longer but then i will let you off because we need some coffee before we continue the seminar , but as i said in my er in my introduction you are very interested in leapfrogging and you criticise the concept of leapfrogging very heavily and i think you do so rightly and one of the reasons why i think you do so rightly is because you have this holistic perspective on development , and but then i i would like you to elaborate in front of our audience a bit more about why you criticise leapfrogging because i know that the argument against you would be but look at india , (what er) , look at india they leapfrogged <S1> they haven't </S1> ah oh tell me why </S2>
<S1> the majority of indians are poor even though they have some of the best trained IT specialists who <S2> [(xx)] </S2> [(xx)] income from united states , the bottom-line is that india as a nation state a majority of indians a lot of them a lot of them live in unspeakable levels of poverty so that i don't think that india has leapfrogged india is in space they have nuclear weapons but let's face it if they have majority of their pop- people living in very ter- terrible conditions , now leapfrogging , my problem with it is not the fact that it talks about going fast further going quicker developing faster but the fact that it has provided a type of conceptual resource for these market fundamentalists it has provided a type of resource for people who are in very high positions internationally and locally the local state to start talking about why you must either like one s- s- south african minister put it either you go dot com or you go dot bomb you must act fast i mean she put it this way before the dot com (blast) and i thought that she should have reminded that if you go dot com you go dot best , yes leapfrogging is a very interesting concept fantastic but it is the fact that it has been (xx) in practice we need it we we need a more subdued approach to the idea of leapfrogging we need a more reasonable approach to say that yes we want to develop fast but not at the level of supersonic jet </S1>
<S2> i think you're absolutely right i think it's also a dangerous concept because it means that you can it seems to say that you can skip <S1> yeah </S1> er total er question of what constitutes development <S1> mhm </S1> so i think it's a very dangerous <S1> [mhm] </S1> [concept] and i think that you absolutely rightly er criticise it and i think that it's very tempting for a lot of people particularly who are (xx) who think that the future is so er bright that you have to wear shades when it comes to comes to the technological developments to overlook related in pushing one sector of society ahead of all the others and what that (creates) are problems that is what you actually hint at on page 168 in the dissertation and you discuss this in relation to the digital divide which he says probably not as much as digital divide between north and south as it is problem about switched on and switched off in a country such as ghana and i think you're absolutely right in this , i think that we should then move on a bit and er i've been told that there is coffee and i think all of us will need some coffee but you will i'm not going to let you off the hook yet , er you state somewhere on page 23 on the relationship i'm not going to quote this because i think i remember but and i'm also going to put it a bit more sharply than you do yourself , on the relationship between communication policy analysis and communication policy implementation you sort of hint at that and you also do that at the very end on page 214 when you talk about global digital options , this is my next to the last question i'm going to ask you , what would you do if you were minister of communication and information in ghana </S2>
<S1> well er <P:05> it's interesting question in the sense that i have never imagined myself as a minister of communication in ghana , and because it is not a position i really would want to be in <S2> @@ well now [i i i've] </S2> [for the reason that for the reason that] <S2> i have put you there </S2> for the reason that i don't think that the minister of communication in ghana really have any ideas of his own that he can implement into the communication (scene) in ghana for the fact that my research shows tells me most of the ideas about deregulation and (implementation) are very (externally) introduced and they have (xx) choices but or they think they have (xx) choices but they introduce it , (but if obviously if i'm er) minister of communication in ghana is very er i would surely try to see to what extent can our policy practices or outcomes democratised communication resources <S2> mhm </S2> to what extent can we move away from market solutions since historically we don't have any record of market being central at a democratic (xx) resources <S2> mhm </S2> i would remind myself that whether we are thinking about united states of canada or european countries no country use the market the way we have to use it today in the developing countries to democratise (phone) access <S2> mhm </S2> so i would simply shift away from that , and i (would order) (xx) on seeing to what extent can the state be central in the delivering of these services hopefully for the future to decide whether we have to er liberalise it , as a minister of communication probably these are the sort of things these are the sort of things i want to do what i'll be able to do is another story </S1>
<S2> mhm , okay er my last question to you is one <S1> [(xx)] </S1> [which i er] which i , was thinking of when i was writing my my presentation of your dissertation and also when i first read your dissertation i was asking myself where is hypothesis <S1> yeah </S1> where is the hypothesis and i tried to look for it and i found one i'm not going to read it all to you all of you but i i found one sort of attempt at hypothesis on page 122 when you make er reference to your countryman the philosopher kwame gyekye is that how you pronounce it <S1> <PRONOUNCES THE NAME> </S1> <PRONOUNCES THE NAME> and his er his reference where you write <READING ALOUD> he puts it quite simply and rightly </READING ALOUD> so you must be agree with that <S1> yes </S1> <READING ALOUD> that postcoloniality is not a project aimed at a- abandoning the entire corpus of colonial heritage because some features and elements of the colonial heritage are by the colonised own reckoning worthwhile for their cultural and intellectual development </READING ALOUD> and then you go on here and er refer to also how he appropriates weber and then you end up by saying <READING ALOUD> but the main (thrust) of his argument still makes sense in partly accounting for the justification of the adoption of a rationalist epistemology </READING ALOUD> and i think if there's something which i find as your thesis hypothesis is we need rationalist epistemology in order to understand communication policies in africa , am i right or [am i wrong] </S2>
<S1> [yeah you're] very right because that is precisely what modernisation is about because modernisation is built on a rationalist epistemology but the fact that the postcolony didn't have it that is the very reason it has to modernise <S2> mhm  </S2> by appropriating modernity <S2> yeah </S2> that's precisely right </S1>
<S2> okay then it's my final task to as it says in my my instructions that i should then sort of sum up and er i have done this in the following manner , first of all let me say that i think the dissertation and also as this discussion has shown that this is a piece of work that is extremely relevant and valid not only to an african but also to a wider context and particularly for the third world countries , and this is being brought out not the least by the references you make to developments outside africa and particularly to latin american theoretical writings which i think that the contrast and the relevance of these to the african situation is very well pointed out , and the analysis of african particularly ghanaian situation does offer material for comparison with developments elsewhere , and in this perspective an important aspect of the dissertation it's historical contextualisation that you make , both as regards the analysis of ghana and the shifts in paradigms as regards communication policies and theories of communication for development i think that development communication policy in an era of economic fundamentalism in ghana introduces us to you as a researcher with a very strong theoretical basis but also with a sense of the importance of factual evidence and that you are capable of analysing and interpreting a confusing situation as regards communication policies in postcolonial africa and as existing research on this (discourse) i think that you have made a very very valuable contribution to the development in this field and i will also like to thank you for an extremely interesting discussion which i think brought out some of the most important aspects of your dissertation so i thank you and i thank the university of tampere for letting me having the opportunity being part of this discussion thank you very much </S2>
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