Meta tags:
description= Making sense of life with Cultural Theory;
Headings (most frequently used words):
the, four, cultures, to, of, wordpress, in, and, read, fourcultures, newsletter, welcome, seasons, simpler, editing, for, now, available, this, is, not, game, religion, 21st, century, what, comes, after, sustainability, resilience, cultural, theory, communication, power, new, media, technology, transition, radio, independence, contested, hierarchies, information, environments, quantity, or, quality, see, also, ways, assemble, evidence, on, climate, change, why, are, people, so, conflicted, about, right, response, pandemic, posts, pagination,
Text of the page (most frequently used words):
the (367), and (148), that (69), this (64), change (44), but (40), for (40), was (38), with (36), not (33), are (32), cultural (32), #climate (32), about (30), #theory (29), four (28), more (25), one (24), social (23), there (22), what (22), you (22), radio (22), resilience (22), from (21), which (20), have (19), sustainability (19), they (18), cultures (17), people (17), all (17), has (17), were (17), other (16), new (16), fanon (16), algerian (16), its (16), many (15), can (15), their (15), douglas (15), wordpress (14), will (14), like (14), 2023 (13), some (13), just (13), different (13), would (13), world (13), information (13), much (13), here (13), oct (12), had (12), mary (12), make (11), egalitarian (11), media (11), than (11), our (11), been (11), french (11), quality (11), between (11), collapse (10), now (10), categories (10), posted (10), hierarchical (10), only (10), how (10), religion (10), ways (9), group (9), articles (9), see (9), individualist (9), message (9), work (9), who (9), because (9), those (9), society (9), then (9), very (9), family (9), them (9), news (9), comment (8), why (8), science (8), grid (8), important (8), two (8), these (8), really (8), could (8), first (8), out (8), since (8), algeria (8), technology (8), quantity (8), radios (8), without (8), way (8), almost (7), three (7), any (7), need (7), his (7), your (7), others (7), comes (7), such (7), leave (7), arab (7), high (7), low (7), time (7), own (7), concept (7), ecological (7), system (7), content (6), blog (6), tags (6), evidence (6), both (6), example (6), may (6), nothing (6), management (6), sense (6), values (6), frantz (6), spring (6), key (6), voice (6), listening (6), even (6), available (6), another (6), sustainable (6), comments (5), view (5), site (5), already (5), page (5), notes (5), perspective (5), post (5), still (5), logos (5), pathos (5), ethos (5), main (5), when (5), keep (5), research (5), governance (5), well (5), don (5), should (5), say (5), else (5), find (5), take (5), power (5), religious (5), actually (5), most (5), worldview (5), scientific (5), themselves (5), life (5), want (5), colonial (5), gaulle (5), also (5), mass (5), population (5), known (5), took (5), over (5), against (5), words (5), resources (5), traditional (5), made (5), claims (5), matter (5), live (5), less (5), century (5), forms (5), her (5), boas (5), summer (5), anthropologist (5), email (4), sign (4), com (4), pandemic (4), 2022 (4), reading (4), biases (4), while (4), using (4), needs (4), before (4), doing (4), fatalist (4), demonstrate (4), institutions (4), either (4), study (4), real (4), framework (4), impacts (4), changing (4), down (4), war (4), things (4), same (4), particular (4), independence (4), contrast (4), environment (4), did (4), after (4), during (4), get (4), being (4), early (4), transition (4), meet (4), development (4), hopkins (4), david (4), within (4), think (4), problem (4), differences (4), simple (4), political (4), old (4), she (4), seasons (4), anthropology (4), winter (4), quoted (4), book (4), worldviews (4), website (3), name (3), required (3), write (3), create (3), right (3), bias (3), covid (3), https (3), doi (3), org (3), 2020 (3), course (3), assemble (3), discussion (3), argument (3), aristotle (3), concepts (3), certainly (3), refers (3), according (3), best (3), hand (3), trying (3), channels (3), communicators (3), model (3), thought (3), communication (3), little (3), simply (3), each (3), version (3), strategy (3), global (3), line (3), status (3), try (3), anything (3), always (3), perhaps (3), means (3), case (3), ignored (3), near (3), head (3), unless (3), someone (3), promote (3), makes (3), scientists (3), amount (3), profit (3), surely (3), everyone (3), rather (3), said (3), show (3), seem (3), called (3), towards (3), where (3), start (3), answer (3), large (3), might (3), 2016 (3), battle (3), france (3), 2013 (3), press (3), role (3), though (3), today (3), president (3), twenty (3), coup (3), recently (3), yet (3), widely (3), part (3), progress (3), nationalists (3), established (3), static (3), signal (3), tell (3), farmers (3), listen (3), interpretation (3), regime (3), isn (3), off (3), interesting (3), longer (3), experience (3), become (3), adopted (3), history (3), hierarchy (3), through (3), nationalist (3), socially (3), image (3), going (3), understanding (3), times (3), place (3), focus (3), thinking (3), sees (3), economic (3), approach (3), scale (3), however (3), aims (3), industrial (3), maybe (3), article (3), years (3), game (3), 21st (3), goods (3), including (3), editing (3), names (3), franz (3), read (3), civilisational (3), richard (3), pattern (3), reader (2), log (2), subscribed (2), subscribe (2), privacy (2), account (2), join (2), 130 (2), subscribers (2), next (2), posts (2), conflicted (2), response (2), planning (2), 2021 (2), association (2), changed (2), edited (2), classic (2), great (2), 2007 (2), too (2), actual (2), often (2), speaker (2), appeal (2), appealing (2), quite (2), enough (2), itself (2), aware (2), help (2), put (2), develop (2), communications (2), interaction (2), views (2), present (2), wrong (2), light (2), seen (2), extreme (2), works (2), audiences (2), state (2), perspectives (2), worked (2), impact (2), quo (2), luck (2), into (2), policy (2), explicit (2), tend (2), climates (2), implications (2), sure (2), does (2), alternatively (2), minister (2), ideal (2), biggest (2), argue (2), attention (2), functions (2), evident (2), must (2), exist (2), crypto (2), doesn (2), future (2), self (2), interest (2), reason (2), prophets (2), eco (2), contested (2), straightforward (2), types (2), matters (2), persuade (2), look (2), variety (2), possible (2), sociology (2), empire (2), london (2), transistors (2), politics (2), howard (2), hussain (2), 2003 (2), contemporary (2), thinkers (2), york (2), 1961 (2), broadcast (2), benkirane (2), consider (2), value (2), connect (2), directly (2), didn (2), understood (2), extremely (2), portable (2), result (2), determined (2), nation (2), heard (2), appeared (2), sets (2), end (2), attempted (2), wanted (2), around (2), jammed (2), told (2), existed (2), telling (2), typology (2), type (2), environments (2), plenty (2), propaganda (2), easy (2), working (2), supports (2), successfully (2), order (2), researchers (2), play (2), recent (2), uses (2), period (2), 2012 (2), soon (2), buying (2), getting (2), previously (2), oppressor (2), movement (2), situation (2), goes (2), distinction (2), man (2), happened (2), active (2), community (2), having (2), broadcasts (2), tool (2), strongly (2), victories (2), traditions (2), month (2), certain (2), fact (2), programs (2), adapted (2), hear (2), workers (2), wireless (2), cosy (2), reinforcing (2), meanwhile (2), indigenous (2), back (2), set (2), threatened (2), non (2), identified (2), particularly (2), text (2), 1950s (2), via (2), everywhere (2), rapid (2), long (2), drive (2), online (2), point (2), adoption (2), accelerating (2), beyond (2), capacity (2), video (2), jump (2), writer (2), rob (2), holmgren (2), living (2), exactly (2), culture (2), possibility (2), worthy (2), modest (2), ambitious (2), replaced (2), narrow (2), list (2), actions (2), proposes (2), resilient (2), somewhat (2), search (2), confirmation (2), achieved (2), spectacularly (2), market (2), hardly (2), integrated (2), systems (2), qua (2), disturbance (2), assumes (2), running (2), come (2), entirely (2), quote (2), anyway (2), check (2), proponents (2), claim (2), relatively (2), services (2), persistence (2), decline (2), numerous (2), something (2), developed (2), idea (2), primitive (2), societies (2), simpler (2), interface (2), apparently (2), sorry (2), days (2), robust (2), seasonality (2), human (2), strange (2), effect (2), quotes (2), jan (2), 2026 (2), disagree (2), wikipedia (2), question (2), perpetually (2), differently (2), acceptance (2), fardon (2), natural (2), says (2), prospect (2), neurodivergent (2), neurodivergence (2), matching (2), earlier (2), welcome (2), recognition (2), inspired (2), wide (2), farndon (2), british (2), short (2), decades (2), making (2), loading, bar, manage, subscriptions, report, pagination, aug, davy, benjamin, distancing, spatiality, 159, 166, 1080, 01944363, 1824617, journal, american, apr, edit, title, 16th, october, link, sections, bit, clearly, dark, side, presenting, rhetorical, deal, contribute, gottweis, 237, 250, presentations, rely, exclusively, ideas, contents, presentation, overshadowed, evoked, person, delivering, highly, underused, implication, configured, supported, audience, character, emotions, fisher, miller, sidney, prof, dan, kahn, suggested, meaning, attached, rightly, suggests, reminded, cognition, project, release, piece, versions, targeted, sophisticated, includes, professing, dangerous, problems, expect, politically, inflammatory, naive, bureaucrats, heads, instance, badly, described, deeply, antagonise, welcomed, settings, shunned, far, hasn, reference, randomizing, fatalism, thrives, enhancing, systematizing, draw, turning, tacit, reward, lottery, fatalists, twin, virtue, anyone, damaging, failures, structure, risks, demonstrably, increase, experts, top, tree, speaks, loudest, failing, guns, royal, pinch, senior, prince, charles, pope, worry, paying, theories, reconfigure, enhance, photovoltaics, competitive, coal, fired, stations, combat, wringing, likes, james, hanson, discounted, communist, fanatical, environmentalist, figurehead, expert, shi, zhengrong, china, solar, billionaire, money, lie, inversely, concrete, hypothetical, bottom, provide, examples, visceral, turns, better, competitors, shouldn, bang, deadly, threats, fragility, warm, signals, tune, authority, authentically, masses, common, knows, true, consensus, egalitarians, arguing, starting, feuds, emotive, rhetoric, whichever, appeals, hearts, minds, elephant, rider, jonathan, haidt, energy, sources, depicted, preliminary, step, peter, preston, prophet, believe, emphatically, arisen, gore, george, monbiot, shot, flames, extremists, derided, civilization, danger, profligate, begin, note, ridiculously, bad, solutions, heavily, weighted, alone, egalitarianism, discourse, presented, fairly, fund, support, pay, numbers, produce, shape, suggestions, viewed, persuaded, stevens, anne, macmillan, education, limited, government, philip, muzammil, oxford, university, democracy, fourth, wave, digital, gibson, nigel, cambridge, malden, polity, blackwell, pub, postcolonial, imagination, trans, chevalier, grove, dying, colonialism, april, reda, alchemy, revolution, networks, gcsp, paper, baucom, ian, 2001, solidarity, diaspora, tactics, 2307, 1209083, literature, remember, seeking, looking, until, able, quadrants, devise, stay, flood, sit, coms, soap, operas, adverts, shock, jock, phone, ins, endlessly, essential, repetitive, material, yesterday, tomorrow, holders, gripping, tightly, aidez, moi, final, seconds, historic, minute, speech, ultimately, failed, enabled, soldiers, ranks, wider, unluckily, plotters, transistor, invented, produced, desperate, extent, accident, television, although, distributed, army, conscripts, determinative, became, hardline, centres, inside, opposed, majority, populations, sitting, jamming, curiously, thing, somewhere, colonists, needed, jam, details, filled, listeners, imaginations, knew, recognized, worth, knowing, resort, scheme, results, benefits, repressive, mostly, promotes, moves, becomes, larger, nazis, subsidised, distribution, 1930s, conversely, higher, warts, calculated, sheer, spin, investigating, electronic, revolutionary, creation, fighting, vitally, committed, assimilating, acting, upon, knees, wanting, concerning, formidable, country, hearing, realise, instead, recognised, organise, broadcasting, imagined, purposed, ends, saying, charge, painfully, finds, emphasized, relations, woman, father, child, pointed, foremost, colonizers, colonized, oppressed, dominant, relationship, foregrounded, problematic, enter, vast, network, events, forces, waged, came, contact, found, himself, oppose, enemy, decolonization, authorities, objected, german, supply, telefunk, company, germans, powers, unauthorised, whereupon, families, actively, suppress, imagine, bogus, station, popular, sold, weeks, batteries, unobtainable, abandoned, comprehensively, space, hierarchies, level, apprehension, receiving, readily, refuses, technique, threatens, stability, sociability, invoked, undifferentiated, copied, western, strict, feudal, patrilineal, moral, taboos, characterizes, sociological, rationale, lack, among, algerians, errors, standard, respectability, practically, impossible, gloss, ironically, european, gather, celebrate, insurgency, otherwise, neither, bought, nor, listened, diffused, unrest, security, normality, feel, civilized, bulwark, native, saw, foreign, entity, destructive, relationships, gathering, night, suspect, mix, genders, ages, overcome, broadcaster, programmes, suitable, essay, wrote, transitions, shifts, 2010s, series, revolutions, 2010, reformist, seemed, travel, rapidly, mobile, phones, ubiquitous, middle, east, influence, significant, term, participants, excluded, crossed, technological, collective, grasp, got, complex, poor, internet, access, resist, attempt, steal, opened, era, home, conferencing, normal, zoom, teams, widened, gap, tech, insiders, outsiders, lockdown, know, webcam, conference, teach, psychiatrist, anti, colonialist, clutching, straws, deep, desire, species, eliminating, habitation, repertoire, replacement, equally, distraction, event, ongoing, destruction, koalas, weren, extinction, aspiration, appear, unreasonably, seeing, bossel, 1998, aspect, ecosystems, difference, broad, versus, improve, endless, carry, covers, focusing, components, features, priority, reduced, outset, models, anthropogenic, failure, nicholas, stern, specifically, based, ecologists, buzz, holling, lance, gunderson, applications, distinctions, cast, stone, neutral, ecology, arguably, carries, greater, precision, pillars, interactions, denying, tries, operates, levels, conceptualise, split, sine, ostensibly, reasonable, practice, vastly, compromising, ability, generations, unclear, achievable, defined, undergo, maintain, controls, measured, magnitude, tolerate, persist, wallington, hobbes, moore, 200, whereas, implies, steady, conception, indefinitely, recognises, dynamism, volatility, essence, halting, maintaining, midst, reducing, tailpipe, building, resiliency, putting, given, sufficient, bracing, withstand, shocks, oil, grows, astronomically, expensive, intensifies, sooner, frays, collapses, alternative, relevant, effective, direction, slow, huge, amounts, stuff, throwing, away, travelling, car, plane, quicker, spite, clear, springing, mind, especially, waste, recycling, lead, motor, fuel, notable, biodiversity, conservation, gains, losses, deserves, whole, wouldn, successful, paradigm, achieving, experiment, assess, corner, initiatives, taken, last, under, rubric, older, sibling, following, creator, permaculture, move, seems, atheism, continue, box, detergent, improved, envisaged, lot, rationalist, analysis, america, unlike, europe, free, competing, sects, firms, aiming, demand, assume, washing, powder, spam, unchanging, secular, straight, fixation, examining, curious, phenomenon, constantly, revitalisation, issue, secularisation, takes, king, hits, remarkable, modern, nevertheless, organisation, flux, comprehensive, balloon, crushed, toddler, shrinks, circumference, pop, unexpectedly, explore, written, furthermore, eminence, grise, behind, exploration, intention, least, partly, counter, mid, twentieth, catholic, ritual, empty, ritualism, modernising, vatican, concerned, anthropological, challenge, religions, somehow, secularism, gets, preoccupied, digression, seriously, amazing, dear, advice, succumbing, kind, block, dave, winer, inimitable, outlining, style, use, quick, hate, blogbrowser, brought, api, retro, revert, editor, option, few, external, editors, ingredients, usually, links, basic, users, writing, app, feels, constant, publishing, surprising, customers, delightful, casual, blogging, pondering, aloud, conclusive, serious, gutenberg, places, blocks, heart, process, reluctance, fatal, drop, frequency, posting, 2008, sites, linked, succumbed, linkrot, vanished, sep, 2024, discovered, crystallized, aristocratic, courts, broke, apart, fishing, season, reverting, smaller, clan, formations, ranked, formal, structures, literally, becoming, depending, year, eller, stretch, graeber, wengrow, therein, describe, prehistory, peoples, mention, 20th, kwakiutl, canada, northwest, coast, dawn, everything, admittedly, russian, doll, pretended, fibbing, quoting, worse, inception, hibernating, involved, projects, struck, description, seemingly, dramatically, rigidly, radical, seasonal, shift, scholarly, accessible, inform, mike, hume, subsequent, marshalled, respective, positions, denigrate, denial, principled, position, conditioned, prior, commitment, sage, personal, method, dangers, unleashed, guise, properties, orders, introduction, collection, neurodiversity, resolved, lastly, civilisation, trusts, keeping, ever, scoffs, negativity, utopia, opportunity, fuelled, ingenuity, physical, primed, scarce, recognise, deny, neurotypicality, distinct, interested, empirical, awareness, principle, measurable, correlated, adrian, lambert, recognisers, predisposed, featured, isherwood, 1979, allen, lane, consumption, ultimate, task, interpretative, procedures, uncover, discredit, universality, aim, tiny, contribution, furthering, shorter, thanks, dropping, areas, used, extended, apply, contexts, biographer, observed, scholarship, ranging, interdisciplinary, professor, talking, significance, academy, podcast, sociologist, linguist, number, collaborators, michael, thompson, aaron, wildavsky, basil, bernstein, evans, pritchard, émile, durkheim, 1999, evolution, parsimonious, 411, 415, 1023, 1007008025151, geojournal, introduced, discussed, richards, paul, perri, ancestors, volume, berghahn, books, sides, every, setting, 1970, styles, contradict, define, depends, viability, puts, symbols, explorations, cosmology, attempts, lens, organizations, stranger, offers, useful, groups, behave, late, 1960s, 70s, 1921, interpreting, attracted, several, risk, address, yes, fourcultures, newsletter, summary, menu, widgets, skip,
Text of the page (random words):
of what comes out of the tailpipe of industrial society but that assumes our industrial society will keep running by contrast hopkins said transition is about building resiliency putting new systems in place to make a given community as self sufficient as possible bracing it to withstand the shocks that will come as oil grows astronomically expensive climate change intensifies and maybe sooner than we think industrial society frays or collapses entirely what are the key differences between sustainability and resilience whereas sustainability implies a steady state conception of the world living within our means indefinitely resilience recognises dynamism and volatility change for resilience science is of the essence resilience is not about halting change but about maintaining those things that really matter to us in the midst of great change sustainability has ostensibly reasonable but in practice vastly ambitious aims to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs and it is unclear that this is achievable at any scale on which it has been attempted in contrast resilience has more modest aims and can be defined as the capacity of a system to undergo disturbance and maintain its functions and controls and may be measured by the magnitude of disturbance the system can tolerate and still persist wallington hobbes and moore 200 4 sustainability has a somewhat integrated concept of the way the world works the three pillars of sustainable development are widely understood to be the social the ecological and the economic and it is the interactions between these that drive the system without denying this resilience is more integrated because it sees and tries to study only one system the social ecological which operates at many different levels of scale so that it makes sense to conceptualise social ecological systems however it does not make sense to split off the social from the ecological this interaction is the sine qua non of the resilience approach from the outset sustainability was a social political concept in search of scientific confirmation it has achieved confirmation spectacularly successfully with the scientific models of anthropogenic climate change the biggest example of market failure in history as nicholas stern put it in contrast resilience is a scientific approach specifically an ecological approach based on the work of ecologists such as buzz holling and lance gunderson in search of social political applications these distinctions are of course hardly cast in stone since no science is value neutral and ecology certainly isn t but resilience arguably carries greater scientific precision that sustainability there is a key difference of focus broad versus narrow between the two concepts if you want to improve sustainability there is an almost endless list of actions you could carry out all of them could be said to make the world more sustainable since social ecological and economic covers just about anything resilience is more narrow it proposes that a sustainable social ecological system is simply one that is more resilient rather than less resilient so by focusing on the resilience of system components rather than other features the long list of actions that could take priority is somewhat reduced there are differences between sustainability and resilience but is it really as simple as seeing the one replaced by the other bossel 1998 sees resilience as only one important aspect of sustainable ecosystems i can t help thinking that the replacement of one worthy concept by another equally worthy concept is a distraction from the main event which is ongoing accelerating destruction in the name of progress or of profit to take just one example of many i would like to live in a world where koalas weren t threatened with extinction but even such a modest aspiration is made to appear unreasonably ambitious i don t think either sustainability or resilience will get me there what would it be called then this deep desire to live with other species without eliminating them living within our means not exactly i think part of the problem is that my culture doesn t really even have the words much less the possibility of co habitation in its repertoire sustainability resilience we re clutching at straws more on resilience a month of resilience posted on oct 30 2022 oct 16 2023 categories articles resilience tags david holmgren resilience rob hopkins sustainability sustainable development leave a comment on what comes after sustainability resilience cultural theory communication and the power of new media frantz fanon psychiatrist writer and anti colonialist frantz fanon has much to teach about the power of new media technology in transition during the covid 19 lockdown everyone i know was using their webcam to meet via video conference or not many had poor internet access and others wanted to resist yet another attempt to steal their privacy for some the pandemic opened a new era of working from home and made video conferencing normal for others the jump to zoom teams and the like just widened the gap between tech insiders and outsiders this situation of rapid change got me thinking about the complex ways in which adoption of new technology impacts society the drive to do so much more online in 2020 is having very significant impacts in the longer term both for the participants and for those excluded we ve crossed a transition point where technological adoption is accelerating beyond our collective capacity to grasp the implications such transitions have happened many times before and one of the more recent shifts took place in the early 2010s there has been plenty of interest in the role of social media in that series of revolutions known as the arab spring 2010 2012 it was a time when reformist values seemed to travel extremely rapidly via the mobile phones that had become ubiquitous in the middle east and everywhere else but the focus on the role of media in times of rapid social change goes back a long way in the arab world the algerian war of the 1950s was a key period for understanding the ways the media influence the course of history radio and independence a key text is frantz fanon s essay this is the voice of algeria fanon wrote about the changing understanding of radio in colonial algeria during the 1950s at first the indigenous algerian population saw the radio as a foreign entity destructive of traditional family relationships back in france the image of a family gathering around the wireless set at night was a cosy socially reinforcing one but in algeria it was widely seen as socially suspect because it threatened to mix genders and ages in non traditional ways to overcome this the french colonial broadcaster identified certain radio programmes as particularly suitable for family listening this strategy did not work in the population at large radios were neither bought nor listened to meanwhile the radio diffused news of unrest to the colonial farmers for them the radio was a voice of security and normality the only way to still feel like a civilized man it was a bulwark fanon claims against going native the wireless a cosy socially reinforcing image ironically the european farmers would hear the news then gather their workers to celebrate victories against an insurgency of which the workers being without radios themselves would otherwise have known nothing fanon s argument is that the classic sociological rationale for a lack of radio listening among algerians was a mass of errors the standard line was that traditions of respectability are so important for us and are so hierarchical that it is practically impossible for us to listen to radio programs in the family fanon s gloss on this is here then at a certain explicit level is the apprehension of a fact receiving sets are not readily adopted by algerian society by and large it refuses this technique which threatens its stability and the traditional types of sociability the reason invoked being that the programs in algeria undifferentiated because they are copied from the western model are not adapted to the strict almost feudal type of patrilineal hierarchy with its many moral taboos that characterizes the algerian family so what changed contested hierarchies fanon claims this argument about family traditions is bogus the evidence as soon as a nationalist radio station appeared it was so popular that all the radios sold out in a matter of weeks and batteries for them were almost unobtainable if this was really a matter of traditional family values how could these values have been abandoned so comprehensively in the space of a month or two only with the start of nationalist radio broadcasts did the radio become a tool of decolonization the french authorities strongly objected to the german supply of radios from the telefunk company the germans ignored the french so the french colonial powers jammed the unauthorised broadcasts whereupon according to fanon families would actively listen to the static and imagine the news of nationalist victories that were surely what the french were trying to suppress he had to enter the vast network of news he had to find his way in a world in which things happened in which events existed in which forces were active through the experience of a war waged by his own people the algerian came in contact with an active community the algerian found himself having to oppose the enemy news with his own news one interpretation of this version of history is that the real hierarchical distinction the radio emphasized was not between traditional family relations such as man and woman father and child there was to be sure fanon pointed out hierarchy in algerian society but it was first and foremost between colonizers and colonized between the oppressor and the oppressed this dominant hierarchical relationship was actually what the new technology foregrounded and made even more problematic another interpretation of this situation might be that technology finds its own uses as the saying goes at first the algerian nationalists had no need of the radio if all it could tell them was the french were in charge they were already painfully aware of that information it took a while for the algerian nationalists to realise that radio previously the voice of the oppressor could instead become the voice of the independence movement or perhaps they always recognised this but it took time to organise the resources to start broadcasting for themselves either way the technology had to be re imagined and then re purposed in order for it to be adopted by the mass of the population for their own ends with the creation of a voice of fighting algeria the algerian was vitally committed to listening to the message to assimilating it and soon to acting upon it buying a radio getting down on one s knees with one s head against the speaker was no longer just wanting to get the news concerning the formidable experience in progress in the country it was hearing the first words of the nation information environments quantity or quality an interesting spin on this discussion comes from research investigating the much more recent uses of electronic communications in regime change during the revolutionary period known as the arab spring benkirane 2012 howard and hussain 2013 researchers calculated that there is a play off between the sheer amount of information available to the population on the one hand and its quality on the other a larger amount of information supports the status quo it may well be propaganda after all the nazis successfully subsidised the mass distribution of radios in the 1930s in order to promote their message but conversely higher quality information supports change telling it like it is warts and all it really is quality not quantity that matters this typology of information results in four ideal type information environments the high quantity low quality environment benefits a repressive regime plenty of information is available but it s mostly propaganda a high quantity high quality information environment promotes moves for change because it becomes easy to see that the regime isn t working in the light of this scheme what are we to make of fanon s interpretation of radio listening the farmers without radios were in an environment of low information and low quality they knew almost nothing of what the radio was telling them and if they did listen in it didn t tell them anything they recognized as worth knowing they had to resort to other media for their news in contrast the algerian family sitting around the radio listening to the static of the jamming signal were in an environment of low quantity but curiously high quality the jammed signal told them almost nothing but what it did tell them was the most important thing of all that there existed somewhere out there a signal that the colonists needed to jam all the other details were filled in by the listeners imaginations this was not the only impact of radio on the progress of algerian independence in 1961 towards the end of the algerian war a group of hardline french nationalists took over the main centres of algeria and attempted a coup inside france against president de gaulle they opposed the president because he had already established that by now the majority of both the french and algerian populations wanted algerian independence unluckily for the plotters the transistor radio had recently been invented and mass produced now the french all had portable radios as a result de gaulle s desperate and determined broadcast to the nation was heard by many many people this was to some extent an accident since de gaulle actually appeared on television although tv sets were not yet widely distributed in particular army conscripts who were not part of the coup heard it on their new portable radios this was determinative for what became known as the battle of the transistors the coup ultimately failed because the radio enabled de gaulle to connect directly with soldiers of all ranks and with the wider french population he didn t need to say much for his message to be understood it was low quantity but extremely high quality the president s key message comes in the final three seconds of a historic twenty minute speech aidez moi perhaps you will be able to consider these four quadrants of information when you next devise your important message high and low quantity high and low quality if you want things to stay the same your best strategy is to flood the channels with quantity sit coms soap operas adverts shock jock phone ins it s all endlessly the same and this is its essential value there is only one real message in this mass of repetitive material things are the same today as they were yesterday and tomorrow the same power holders will be gripping it even more tightly remember though that those seeking change will keep o...
|
