BRETTON WOODS AND

DEVELOPMENT
COMMUNICATION

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMM

The creation of the Bretton Woods system
(within the period of turmoil)
After World War II, the Bretton Woods system was
established.
In fact, the agreement to create a new
international monetary system was negotiated
among the allied powers even before the end of
WW2, leading to the Bretton Woods Agreement in
1944.

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Bretton Woods is the name of a small tourist spot in the
mountains of New Hampshire, USA.
There, the delegates gathered to design a new global
economic system.
Their most important goal was to prevent each country
from pursuing selfish policies, such as competitive
devaluation of currency (to stimulate exports so that
exports are less expensive but limit imports),
protectionism and forming trade blocks, which damaged
the world economy in the 1930s.

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The British delegation was headed by
John M. Keynes, the famous
economist, while Harry D. White of
the US Treasury Department
represented the American side.
The contents of the new system were
negotiated essentially by these two
countries.

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As a dominant military and economic
power, the US took the leadership
away from Britain, which was war
torn and losing international
influence.
The Keynes proposal was rejected
and the US idea became the
foundation of the newly created
International Monetary Fund (IMF).

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Each country would contribute a certain
amount ("quota") to this fund, and
member countries with BOP difficulties
would borrow (or "purchase" hard
currencies) from this fund.
This meant that only deficit countries
would bear the responsibility for correcting
the imbalance. (The UK was expected to
be a deficit country after the war, while the
US was expected to be a surplus country.)

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The Bretton Woods Agreement also
established the World Bank
(International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development).
The World Bank's initial purpose was
to assist the recovery of war-torn
Europe and Japan.

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COMM
But in reality, Japan's recovery was assisted
by US bilateral aid and Europe's recovery
was promoted by the 1948 Marshall Plan
(after WWII), a massive US aid program in
order to prevent the spread of Soviet
Communism.
The World Bank subsequently became an
organization to assist developing countries.
The World Bank was at the center of the
Modernization paradigm.

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The IMF and the World Bank were
called the Bretton Woods sister
organizations.
One more organization (International
Trade Organization) was also planned
but not created at that time.

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COMM
Instead, the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a nonorganizational entity, played the role
of promoting free trade for four
decades.
GATT became institutionalized as
WTO in 1995. So we now have three
sisters.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMM

The Emergence of DevComm Paradigms
Historical Context
When the United States became a superpower
after World War II, American social scientists were
called upon to study the problems of Third
Worlddevelopment.
This started the modernization school, which
dominated the field of development in the 1950s
and Rogers rightly called dominant paradigm of
development as it exercised a dominant influence
in the field of development.

 This model emphasizes productivity, economic

growth, industrialization, urbanization,
centralized planning and endogenous factors
of development, and development was
measured by gross national product (GNP).
Daniel Lerner and Wilbur Schramm are
among the influential advocates who made
significant contributions in identifying the role
of communication for technological
development.

 Heavily influenced by the evolutionary

theory, American social scientists
conceptualized modernization as a
phased, irreversible, progressive, lengthy
process that moves in the direction of
the American model.
Strongly influenced by Parsons
functionalist theory, they looked upon
modernity as incompatible with tradition.

 Subsequently the American social

scientists proposed that Third World
countries should copy American
values, rely on US loans and aid, and
transform their traditional
institutions.

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-The modernization paradigm,
dominant in academic circles from
around 1945 to 1965, supported the
transferring of technology and
the socio-political culture of the
developed societies to the traditional
societies.

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Development was defined as economic growth.
The central idea in the modernization perspective is the idea of
evolution, which implies that development is conceived as
firstly, directional and cumulative, secondly, predetermined and
irreversible, thirdly, progressive, and fourthly, immanent with

reference to the nation state.

The developed western societies or modern societies seem to
be
the ultimate goals which the less developed societies strive to
reach.

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All societies would, passing through similar
stages, evolve to a common point: the
modern society.
In order to be a modern society, the
attitudes of backward peopletheir
traditionalism,
bad taste, superstition, fatalism, etc.which
are obstacles and barriers in the traditional
societies have to be removed.

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The differences among nations are explained
in terms of the degree of development rather
than the fundamental nature of each.
Hence, the central problem of development
was thought to revolve around the question
of bridging the gap and catching up by
means of imitation processes between
traditional and modern sectors, between
retarded and advanced or between
barbarian and civilized sectors.

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Daniel Lerner and Wilbur Schramm (1964)
supported the dominant paradigm and advocated
automation and technology for development and
change.
They made significant contributions in identifying
the role of communication for technological
development.
The development community argued that the case
of underdevelopment in the developing countries
was not due to external causes but due to internal
causes present within the nation and the individual
as well as within the social structure.

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Lerner and Schramm stressed that the
individual was to be blamed to the
extent that he was resistant to change
and modernization, whereas Rogers,
Bordenave and Beltran (1976) argued
that the social structural constraints like
government bureaucracy, land tenure
system, caste, exploitative linkages (e.g.
middlemen), etc. were to be blamed.

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Lerner, Schramm and Rogers emphasized
role of mass media for development and
social, political change.
Lerner identified four indices of
development: industrialization, literacy,
media exposure and political participation.
People have to be mobile, empathetic
(take charge), and participatory for
development.

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Lerner (1958) suggested that media
exposure, political participation and
developing empathy are necessary
for development.
Modern society is a participant
society and it works by consensus.

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Thus, in the dominant paradigm the
communication flow was one way
which was top-down vertical
communication from the authorities
to the people, the mass media
channels were used to mobilize the
people for development and the
audience was assigned a passive role
for acceptance of social change.

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The failure of the Modernization
programs in Latin America in the
1960s led to the need for an
overhaul of strategies/paradigms.
This led to the emergence of a neoMarxist dependency school.

 These recent modifications of the

modernization school have led to a
new direction of research referred as
the new modernization studies or
dependency school.

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The dependency paradigm played an important role in the
movement for a New World Information and
Communication Order from the late 1960s to the early
1980s.
At that time, the new states in Africa, Asia and the
success
of socialist and popular movements in Cuba, China, Chile
and other countries provided the goals for political,
economic and cultural self-determination within
the international community of nations.

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These new nations shared the ideas
of being independent from the
superpowers and moved to form the
Non-Aligned Nations.
The Non-Aligned Movement defined
development as political struggle
(i.e. against former colonialists;
capitalism)

 This dependency school was highly critical of

modernization school, frequently attacking it
as a rationalization of imperialism.
The dependency school criticized the idea as
proposed by the modernization school that
the linkages with Western and Third World
countries as a set of externally imposed,
exploitative, dependent, economic
relationship incompatible with development.

 Thus this school advocated that Third

World countries should sever their
linkages with western countries in order to
promote an autonomous, independent
path of development.
This is because that the latest theme of
modernization school is that tradition can
play a beneficial role in development and
Third World countries can pursue their
own paths of development.

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According to the dependency theory,
the most important hindrances to
development are not the shortage of
capital or management, as the
modernization theorists contend, but
must be sought in the present
international system.
The obstacles are thus not internal
but external.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV

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This also means that development in the
Centre (the US) determines and maintains the
underdevelopment in the Periphery (developing
nations).

.The two poles are structurally connected to each

other.
To remove these external obstacles, they argue, each
peripheral country should dissociate itself from the
world market and opt for a self-reliant development
strategy. (c.f. Malaysia dissociated itself from the US during Dr. Ms
premiership but forged ties with Japan)

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To make this happen, most scholars
advocated that a more or less revolutionary
political transformation will be necessary. (Dr.
M?)
Therefore, the dependency paradigm in
general is characterized by a global approach,
an emphasis on external factors and regional
contradictions, a polarization between
development and underdevelopment, and a
primarily economically oriented analytical
method.

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COMM
Many non-aligned countries were
simply too weak economically, and
too indebted, to operate
autonomously.
Dependency addressed the causes of
underdevelopment, but did not
provide ways of addressing that
underdevelopment.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMM

The development philosophy of the
dependency model is that foreign
penetration, technology and information
have created underdevelopment rather
than being a force for development.
The economic and cultural dependency
on developed countries shapes the
social and economic structures of many
developing countries.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMM

Dependency theorists, T. Dos Santos
(1970), Qui Jano, Cardoso and
Chilcote etc., hypothesized that
contemporary underdevelopment
was created by the same process of
expansion of capitalism by which
developed countries progressed.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMM

It is argued that the diffusion of the lifestyle of the developed country through
mass media aggravates social inequality,
because the communication and diffusion
of the modernized life-style is only among
elites.
But the consumerism created by the mass
media frustrates the poor as it does not fit
in with their economic and social reality.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMM

The communication strategies suggested
are:
to educate the people about the vicious nature
and the stifling dependency relationships,
to mobilize national and regional support
communication channels.

They argue that mass media system in

these countries is caught in the
dependency relationships and at times
actively supports them.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMM

Therefore, communication strategies
should serve the educational and
mobilizing functions.
Mass media could be employed
purposefully once structural
transformation of society takes place
(Louis Beltran and P.Allien,1976)

 However, when the dependency school

came under attack in the early 1970s, its
researchers modified their basic
assumptions as follows:
dependency is not just an economic but also a
sociopolitical process;
dependency is not just an external relationship
but also a historically specific internal
relationship; and
development can occur side by side with
dependency.

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The New Paradigm of Development
The new Paradigm emerged in the 1970s.
It is a reaction to all development models
in the past and it tries to assimilate the
various emphasis of all the other models.
Development theorists and practitioners
have incorporated many dimensions in
the development model which were
never emphasized earlier.

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The unifying dimension of this alternative model is
participation in development.
This approach attempts to integrate strategically a
host of ideas related to development that have
emerged in the past such as popular participation,
grass roots development, integrated rural
development, use of appropriate technology,
fulfilment of basic needs, productive use of local
resources, maintenance of ecological balances,
development problems to be defined by the people
themselves and culture as a mediating force in
development.

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There is an explicit emphasis on the
idea of self-reliance, selfdevelopment and redistribution of
resources between social groups,
urban and rural areas, regions and
sexes.

 Thus a new direction of dependency

started as the new dependency
studies.
The coexistence of contrasting
perspectives in the field of
development made the 1970s a time
of intellectual fertility.
By the mid 1970s, the ideological
battle between the modernization
school and the dependency school

 The world-system perspective, thus emerged,

and offered a new orientation to the
interpretation of major events in the 1970s,
such as East Asian industrialization, the crisis
of the socialist states, and the decline of the
capitalist world-economy (i.e. free market,
neo-liberalism practices).
Influenced first by the dependency school and
then by the French Annales school, worldsystem researchers emphasized the need to
examine the totality.

 The unit of analysis thus should be the

world-economy, a historical system
composed of three strata: the core, the
semiperiphery, and the periphery.
The world-system school contended that
by the late twentieth century, the
capitalist world economy would reach a
transitional stage at which real choices
might be made to change the path of
human history.

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The role of communication which was
essentially to inform and influence people
was being revised and proposed as a
process of social interaction through the
balanced exchange of information which
shall lead to change.
The participatory dimension of the model
emerged, from the failure of the whole
development philosophy of the Dominant
Paradigm.

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COMM
The communication needs as identified
by UNESCO (1978) in the New Paradigm
are open dialogue which reflects
diversified views and experiences.
Secondly, multi directional
communication flow is necessary.
This multi directional flow calls for top
down as well as horizontal communication
and bottom-up communication.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV

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The horizontal communication is across society
horizontally from person to person, village to
village and rural to urban.
The bottom-top is from people to government
and top-down the other way around.
UNESCO further contends that for participatory
rural communication, media should be made
available in rural areas.
There should be linkage between development
initiatives and communication channels.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV

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The communication strategy urged in this
paradigm used mainly interpersonal channels
with support from mass media-both
cosmopolitan and indigenous media.
The functions of communication were not only
to disseminate information but also educate
them for development by persuasion through
mass media.
Interpersonal channels were utilized for
communicating feedback on development
activities.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMM

Approaches to Development Communication
There are varied approaches to handle
development communication which are not
exclusive to each other.
The main approaches are:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Diffusion/extension approach
Mass Media approach
Development support communication approach
Instructional approach
Integrated approach
Localized approach
Planned strategy

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMM

Diffusion/ extension Approach to
Development Communication:
The main focus of this approach is the adoption
of technological and social innovations through
diffusion of new ideas, services and products.
Diffusion of both material and social
innovations is necessary for development.
Material innovations refer to economic and
technological innovations and social
innovations pertain to social needs and
structure.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMM

The process of diffusion starts with the need
assessment of the community and the need
fulfilment of community in a better way
through innovations.
The individual and community decisions for
acceptance and rejection of innovations
depend primarily on the needs of the adopters.
What is communicated about the innovations
and how it is communicated are very
important.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMM

The resultant consequences of diffusion can be
direct/indirect, latent (existing)/manifest
(develop) and functional/dysfunctional.
The early models of diffusion focused only on
material growth.
But it was soon realized that social growth along
with material growth was necessary for diffusion
of products, ideas and services.
Therefore, diffusion decisions have to handle
the economic, technological and social
constraints.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMM

Mass Media in Development Communication:
A well-defined and developed mass media and
interpersonal communication infrastructure is
necessary for development communication.
It is necessary that these infrastructures should be
accessible to the people, both physically and
socially.
The content of the messages should be balanced.
The content should be both rural and urban oriented
and addressed to masses in both sectors.
The messages should be need-based and they
should appeal to the audience.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMM

Development support communication:
Communication is used for persuasion,
transmission of knowledge and information,
for personal expression, and as a vital
instrument for social and political change
associated with sectoral development.
It is established that development support
communication system will continuously
emphasize the appropriate motivation for the
ongoing support to sectoral development
programmes.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMM

Communication strives not only to inform
and educate but also to motivate people and
secure public participation in the growth and
change process.
A widespread understanding of development
plans is an essential stage in the public
cooperation for national development.
Methods of communication must give people
messages in simple language for
understanding.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMM

The development plans must be
carried in every home in the
language and symbols of the people
and expressed in terms of their
common needs and problems.
If obstacles are encountered and
things go wrong somewhere people
must be informed and acquainted
with the steps taken to set things
right.

 The integrated approach to

development communication
emphasizes the need to avoid
duplication and waste in development
efforts.
The balance in the spread of information
facilities must be maintained both for
rural and urban, backward and
prosperous areas.

 Institutional approach focuses on

education for development.
The emphasis is on literacy-universal
education, adult education, formal and
non-formal education.
There is emphasis on need-based
training and development oriented
programmes conducive to development.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMM

Planned Strategy for Development
Communication:
Multi-channel approach for development
communication would ensure wider reach
with lasting effect.
The success of development communication
depends on team approach, i.e. the
coordination between the communication
agencies (extension workers, radio, TV,
Press, etc.) and development agencies.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMM

The team should consist of
communicators, experts, specialists
and researchers.
Consultation, collaboration and
coordination between development
agencies and communication media
agencies would facilitate the
effectiveness of the development
communication strategy.

BRETTON WOODS AND DEV COMM

Community-based communication
system may be evolved to ensure
greater participation of local people
in planning and production of
communication material which is
community-based.

 The development process, almost

globally, has shown a lack of
sensitivity to the environment.
This has had lethal effects.
History bears testimony to the fact
that some civilizations have died
because of their reckless exploitation
of the environment.

 An important element that is missing

from most planning development is
sustainability.
Most development countries are
consciously or unconsciously trying
to copy the West without any
awareness of their resources and
limits.

 While relative self-reliance is the

ideal, global interdependence cannot
be ignored.
The developed countries have
depended, and still depend, on the
developing countries for many
important resources that have made
their development possible and
contribute to its sustainability.

 This interdependence is not

restricted only to raw and semiprocessed materials; the West has
drawn heavily also on the brain
power and trained competence of the
Third World.
Silicon Valley/NASA rely on foreign
expertise.

 Pollution problems and overpopulation

problems on available resources helped create
doubts whether unending growth was possible
or desirable, whether high technology was the
most appropriate engine for development.
There was a growing loss of faith in the
trickle-down theory of distributive
development benefits.
People were getting development weary
from the slow rate of economic development.

 The world oil crisis demonstrated that

developing countries could make their
own rules in the international game and
produced some suddenly rich developing
nations.
This was a lesson to other developing
countries of Latin America, Asia and Africa
that the causes of underdevelopment
were not mainly internal (but external i.e.
demand for oil internationally).

 The sudden opening of international

relations with China allowed the rest
of the world to learn details of her
pathways to development.
China had created miracle of
modernization in two decades
without any foreign assistance.

 The western world was suspicious

over Chinas success.
Fearful of Chinas economic
hegemony.
Is this leading to a new kind of war??
What caused war in Iraq??
Is war a strategy/a form of
investment??
Awareness on American double
standards and secrecy.

Thats all folks !!