Communication and Development in a Capitalist World

This book argues that communication practices for development and social change are influenced by an underlying, pernicious spirit of capitalism, which intrinsically assumes that capitalism is good for efficient, sustainable development.

Communication is at the frontlines of the mass disruptions occurring across international development funding. This makes it a particularly novel vantage point for analysing tensions and contradictions associated with the shift towards a privatisation of development financing, such as public private partnerships, corporate social responsibility, and social enterprise. Moreover, the same attributes that make communication and storytelling powerful tools of social change see them frequently captured for branding and neoliberal story curation on platforms governed by digital capitalism. Drawing on rich, empirical, poetic data from Malawi and India, this book reclaims the power of storytelling as part of an innovative suite of arts-based, and participatory research methods. The book argues that we need to radically reconceptualise sustainability. Drawing on anticapitalist, feminist and other futures-oriented theories it proposes an imaginative ‘remaking’ to unearth non-capitalist, alternatives.

Offering nuanced, sometimes counter-intuitive insights, this book will be an important read for researchers and students of international development, social change, and communication and media studies. It will also be of interest to communication and development professionals.