Debashish Munshi | University of Waikato (original) (raw)

Papers by Debashish Munshi

Research paper thumbnail of Transparency as a Product of Processes of Power and Liquid Modernity: A Conceptual Paper

Social Science Research Network, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Public relations and sustainable citizenship

Research paper thumbnail of Globalization and Global Village

The International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication, Dec 13, 2017

Research paper thumbnail of Encountering Communication Ethics in the Contemporary World: Principles, People, and Contexts

Research paper thumbnail of Reconfigurar las relaciones públicas : ecología, equidad y empresa

... los amigos y académicos israelíes, Tamar y Jakob Katriel, Nurit Zeitman, Nurit Guttman, Alaya... more ... los amigos y académicos israelíes, Tamar y Jakob Katriel, Nurit Zeitman, Nurit Guttman, Alaya Malach-Pines, Yoram y Pnina Peri, Danny y Michal Arazi, Shlomo y Mena Inbar, Zveika y el Gareen Oz, ya mi extensa familia israelí Doria, Yonathan, Galit, Nimrod, Gilad, Illana, Dana ...

Research paper thumbnail of Culture and politics in overlapping frames for the future: Multi-dimensional activist organizing and communicating on climate change in Aotearoa New Zealand

Organization, Nov 15, 2022

Responding to climate change requires us to reimagine not only our future on a planet that is rap... more Responding to climate change requires us to reimagine not only our future on a planet that is rapidly changing, but also how we organize to create political change. The climate movement and those involved in climate activism frame action on climate change in a diverse manner, articulating multiple possibilities for, and means to achieve, a different society. This article explores the ways in which activist groups in Aotearoa New Zealand work with cultural values and political imagination to organize themselves in framing the future to communicate and mobilize change. Our research identifies four key frames – rebel, reform, rebuild, and ruin – that shape the approaches taken by activists in order to resist the status quo and achieve radical change. We show how activists frame climate action and draw on culture to negotiate the political intersections of organizing for change, as well as how these frames overlap to create “in-between spaces.” Examining these in-between spaces reveals multiple and contextual visions of political change, emphasizing the importance of the cultural contexts of Aotearoa and the possibilities that arise from imagining different futures.

Research paper thumbnail of Reconfiguring Public Relations

Introduction: The case for Reconfiguration 1. Before and After Public Relations Excellence: Re-Fr... more Introduction: The case for Reconfiguration 1. Before and After Public Relations Excellence: Re-Framing Theory and Global Developments 2. Changing the Settings: Requisite Varieties 3. Connecting the Posts 4. Planet as Stakeholder 5: Resituating Identities 6. Theoretical Black Holes 7. Decolonizing Public Relations 8: Science and Edge-Happening Events 9. Promotional Culture 10. Constructing Freedom: 9/11's New World Order 11. Revaluing Intangibles: Postindustrial Possibilities 12. Projecting Futures

Research paper thumbnail of Decolonizing Knowledge: Cultural Aspirations, Political Self-Determination, and Social Rights in Knowledge Making

New perspectives in organizational communication, 2023

Research paper thumbnail of Organizing Away from the Gaze: Local Knowledges, New Futures

New perspectives in organizational communication, 2023

Research paper thumbnail of The public strikes back

Routledge eBooks, Sep 9, 2022

Research paper thumbnail of Public Relations and Sustainable Citizenship

Routledge eBooks, Aug 31, 2020

In Public Relations and Sustainable Citizenship, Munshi and Kurian once again deliver a powerful ... more In Public Relations and Sustainable Citizenship, Munshi and Kurian once again deliver a powerful work of the highest quality scholarship that insists on our attention. Shifting the terrain for both functional and critical approaches to public relations, they emphasise the fundamental importance of action, connection and relationship to resistance communication. As a way of understanding the many acts of resistance to planetary domination by capitalist and political elites, the power of public relations for sustainable citizenship is both emergent, built on organic connections that grow as causes and concerns multiply, and urgent, built on a passion for justice that should engage us all. As such, this book is not only a powerful alternative theorisation of public relations in the interests of the planet and its people; it is also a call to action for scholars and practitioners to democratise public relations and use its power productively."-Lee Edwards, London School of Economics and Political Science This book examines how public relations might re-imagine itself as an instrument of "sustainable citizenship" by exploring alternative models of representing and building relationships with and among marginalized publics that disrupt the standard discourses of public relations. It argues that public relations needs to situate itself in the larger context of citizenship, the values and ethics that inform it, and the attitudes and behaviours that characterize it. Interlacing critical public relations with a theoretical fabric woven with strands of postcolonial histories, Indigenous studies, feminist studies, and political theory, the book brings out the often-unseen processes of relationship building that nurture solidarity among historically marginalized publics. The book is illustrated with global cases of public relations as sustainable citizenship in action across three core elements of the earth: air, water, and land. In each of the cases, readers can see how resistance movements, not necessarily aligned with any specific organization or interest group, are seeking to change the status quo of a world increasingly defined by exploitation, overconsumption, sectarianism, and faux nationalism. This challenging book will be of interest to students and scholars of not only public relations but also the broader social and management sciences who are committed to issues of environmental and social justice.

Research paper thumbnail of Editors' introduction: gender and the information society

Feminist Media Studies, Nov 1, 2003

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is being held this year in Geneva, with a foll... more The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is being held this year in Geneva, with a follow-up conference in Tunisia in 2005. Under the aegis of the United Nations, the summit addresses issues that are of immediate relevance to scholars in the field of communication, including the “new world order” created by global flows of information, the impact of information technology (IT) on the First World-Third World configuration, the information gap and its effects on practices of democratic governance and civil society formations, and numerous other related topics. Given this timely consideration of the role and place of IT in our lives, we have sought to identify the various ways in which gender is implicated in this brave new world, using the criticism and commentary section to highlight gender as a crucial variable in this debate. Too often discussions of such global topics are enveloped by wide-ranging and global policy concerns, where such a focus tends to ignore the real and material effects that policy has on the lives of women and men. Therefore, we want to highlight the ways in which gender is implicated in both information technology processes and in the access to and use of IT. In other words, through a focus on gender, we want to render visible the opportunities and challenges afforded by the development of the Information Society and explore the ways in which the rhetoric of empowerment masks the perpetuation of existing gender hierarchies. The topic generated a lot of interest and elucidated a broad array of experiences from across the globe. Whether assessing women’s access to technology or the ways in which information systems are mobilised to “develop” the South, a unifying theme is that of uneven development. Even those essays that underscore the beneficial aspects of IT include a cautionary note on the blind spots that emerge when the utopic promise of the technology is materialised. Together the essays outline the challenges feminist scholars face as they participate in discussions of democratic governance in Information Society, especially in the realm of universal and equitable access. Moulding the literature on the digital divide to account for women as subjects and objects of IT discourses, Leda Cooks and Kirsten Isgro ask questions about the empowerment rhetoric focused on information and communication technology (ICT), gender and development which emanates from a First World perspective. They suggest that self-conscious reflexivity about the relationship between capital and technology could provoke changes in First World practices and not simply shift the emphasis onto a more informed and inclusive ICT strategy for the developing world. Following this theoretical roadmap is a series of essays that chart the multifar-

Research paper thumbnail of Public Relations and Sustainable Citizenship: Representing the Unrepresented

Research paper thumbnail of Releasing/Translating Agency

Routledge eBooks, Sep 13, 2017

Research paper thumbnail of Media, politics, and the Asianisation of a polarised immigration debate in New Zealand

The Australian Journal of Communication, 1998

Research paper thumbnail of Earth

Routledge eBooks, Aug 31, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Imagining Organizational Communication as Sustainable Citizenship

Management Communication Quarterly, Dec 21, 2014

Organizational communication scholarship has made significant strides in theorizing ethical (e.g.... more Organizational communication scholarship has made significant strides in theorizing ethical (e.g., Seeger & Kuhn, 2011), socially responsible (e.g., May, Cheney, & Roper, 2007; Morsing & Schultz, 2006), environmentally sound (e.g., Cox, 2013), gender-sensitive (e.g., Ashcraft & Mumby, 2004; Buzzanell & Liu, 2005), race-sensitive (e.g., Ashcraft & Allen, 2003; Parker & Grimes, 2009), work–life balanced (Kirby & Buzzanell, 2014), and alternative (e.g., Broadfoot & Munshi, 2007; Dutta & Pal, 2010) ways of organizing and communicating. These strides notwithstanding, there has been very little research on what might constitute sustainable organizing and communicating in a rapidly changing and increasingly contentious world. In this essay, we build on a framework of “sustainable citizenship” (Kurian, Munshi, & Bartlett, 2014) to imagine an architecture of sustainable organizing and communicating that takes a fresh look at the idea of stakeholder engagement. The application of stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984) largely revolves around organizations strategically managing relationships with distinct and discrete publics with mutually exclusive agendas, interests, voices, and rationalities. However, in such formulations, business and corporate goals and values remain the drivers of engagement (Freeman, Harrison, Wicks, Parmar, & De Colle, 2010) as is evident in the spawning projects on business ethics and corporate social responsibility, for example. As Whitman (2008) points out, this influence of business management theory on stakeholder discourse has led to an idea of “corporate citizenship,” which aims at

Research paper thumbnail of Narrating the anxious market: in search of alternatives during global crises

Consumption Markets & Culture

Research paper thumbnail of Postscript A conversation about the future of women, culture and development

Research paper thumbnail of On the Edges of Development

Introduction: From the Edges of Development Kum-Kum Bhavnani, John Foran, Priya Kurian and Debash... more Introduction: From the Edges of Development Kum-Kum Bhavnani, John Foran, Priya Kurian and Debashish Munshi Part 1: Refusing Representations of Development 1. October 17, 1961 Moustafa Bayoumi 2. Ode to "Quasheba": Resistance Rituals Among Higgler Women in Jamaica Hume N. Johnson 3. Plural Economies and the Conditions for Refusal: Gendered Developments in Bangkok Ara Wilson 4. Dancing on the Edge: Women, Culture, and a Passion for Change Kum-Kum Bhavnani and Krista Bywater 5. Resisting Westernity and Refusing Development Molefi Kete Asante Part 2: Emergent Discourses of Development 6. From Roosevelt in Germany to Bush in Iraq: Development's Discourse of Liberation, Democracy, and Free Trade Josefina Saldana 7. Migrants, Genes, and Socio-Scientific Phobias: Charting the Fear of the "Third World" Tag in Discourses of Development in New Zealand Priya Kurian and Debashish Munshi 8. OFW Tales, or Globalization Discourses and Development Ming-Yan Lai 9. Erratic Hopes and Inconsistent Expectations for Mexican Rural Women: A Critique of Economic Thinking on Alternatives to Poverty Magadalena Villarreal 10. From Old to New Political Cultures of Opposition: Radical Social Change in an Era of Globalization John Foran Part 3: Fictions of Development 11. Mama Benz and the Taste of Money: A Critical View of a "Homespun" Rags-to-Riches Story of Post-Independence Africa Lena Khor 12. History, Development, and Transformation in Paule Marshall's The Chosen Place, The Timeless People: A Conversation Among Students of Development Erin Kennedy, Edwin Lopez, Moira O'Neil and Molly Talcott 13. Urduja through the Looking Glass: A Response to Colonial Trauma Tera Maxwell 14. Fictions of (Under)Development: Hunger Artists in the Global Economy Francoise Lionnet. Afterword Susanne Schech

Research paper thumbnail of Transparency as a Product of Processes of Power and Liquid Modernity: A Conceptual Paper

Social Science Research Network, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Public relations and sustainable citizenship

Research paper thumbnail of Globalization and Global Village

The International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication, Dec 13, 2017

Research paper thumbnail of Encountering Communication Ethics in the Contemporary World: Principles, People, and Contexts

Research paper thumbnail of Reconfigurar las relaciones públicas : ecología, equidad y empresa

... los amigos y académicos israelíes, Tamar y Jakob Katriel, Nurit Zeitman, Nurit Guttman, Alaya... more ... los amigos y académicos israelíes, Tamar y Jakob Katriel, Nurit Zeitman, Nurit Guttman, Alaya Malach-Pines, Yoram y Pnina Peri, Danny y Michal Arazi, Shlomo y Mena Inbar, Zveika y el Gareen Oz, ya mi extensa familia israelí Doria, Yonathan, Galit, Nimrod, Gilad, Illana, Dana ...

Research paper thumbnail of Culture and politics in overlapping frames for the future: Multi-dimensional activist organizing and communicating on climate change in Aotearoa New Zealand

Organization, Nov 15, 2022

Responding to climate change requires us to reimagine not only our future on a planet that is rap... more Responding to climate change requires us to reimagine not only our future on a planet that is rapidly changing, but also how we organize to create political change. The climate movement and those involved in climate activism frame action on climate change in a diverse manner, articulating multiple possibilities for, and means to achieve, a different society. This article explores the ways in which activist groups in Aotearoa New Zealand work with cultural values and political imagination to organize themselves in framing the future to communicate and mobilize change. Our research identifies four key frames – rebel, reform, rebuild, and ruin – that shape the approaches taken by activists in order to resist the status quo and achieve radical change. We show how activists frame climate action and draw on culture to negotiate the political intersections of organizing for change, as well as how these frames overlap to create “in-between spaces.” Examining these in-between spaces reveals multiple and contextual visions of political change, emphasizing the importance of the cultural contexts of Aotearoa and the possibilities that arise from imagining different futures.

Research paper thumbnail of Reconfiguring Public Relations

Introduction: The case for Reconfiguration 1. Before and After Public Relations Excellence: Re-Fr... more Introduction: The case for Reconfiguration 1. Before and After Public Relations Excellence: Re-Framing Theory and Global Developments 2. Changing the Settings: Requisite Varieties 3. Connecting the Posts 4. Planet as Stakeholder 5: Resituating Identities 6. Theoretical Black Holes 7. Decolonizing Public Relations 8: Science and Edge-Happening Events 9. Promotional Culture 10. Constructing Freedom: 9/11's New World Order 11. Revaluing Intangibles: Postindustrial Possibilities 12. Projecting Futures

Research paper thumbnail of Decolonizing Knowledge: Cultural Aspirations, Political Self-Determination, and Social Rights in Knowledge Making

New perspectives in organizational communication, 2023

Research paper thumbnail of Organizing Away from the Gaze: Local Knowledges, New Futures

New perspectives in organizational communication, 2023

Research paper thumbnail of The public strikes back

Routledge eBooks, Sep 9, 2022

Research paper thumbnail of Public Relations and Sustainable Citizenship

Routledge eBooks, Aug 31, 2020

In Public Relations and Sustainable Citizenship, Munshi and Kurian once again deliver a powerful ... more In Public Relations and Sustainable Citizenship, Munshi and Kurian once again deliver a powerful work of the highest quality scholarship that insists on our attention. Shifting the terrain for both functional and critical approaches to public relations, they emphasise the fundamental importance of action, connection and relationship to resistance communication. As a way of understanding the many acts of resistance to planetary domination by capitalist and political elites, the power of public relations for sustainable citizenship is both emergent, built on organic connections that grow as causes and concerns multiply, and urgent, built on a passion for justice that should engage us all. As such, this book is not only a powerful alternative theorisation of public relations in the interests of the planet and its people; it is also a call to action for scholars and practitioners to democratise public relations and use its power productively."-Lee Edwards, London School of Economics and Political Science This book examines how public relations might re-imagine itself as an instrument of "sustainable citizenship" by exploring alternative models of representing and building relationships with and among marginalized publics that disrupt the standard discourses of public relations. It argues that public relations needs to situate itself in the larger context of citizenship, the values and ethics that inform it, and the attitudes and behaviours that characterize it. Interlacing critical public relations with a theoretical fabric woven with strands of postcolonial histories, Indigenous studies, feminist studies, and political theory, the book brings out the often-unseen processes of relationship building that nurture solidarity among historically marginalized publics. The book is illustrated with global cases of public relations as sustainable citizenship in action across three core elements of the earth: air, water, and land. In each of the cases, readers can see how resistance movements, not necessarily aligned with any specific organization or interest group, are seeking to change the status quo of a world increasingly defined by exploitation, overconsumption, sectarianism, and faux nationalism. This challenging book will be of interest to students and scholars of not only public relations but also the broader social and management sciences who are committed to issues of environmental and social justice.

Research paper thumbnail of Editors' introduction: gender and the information society

Feminist Media Studies, Nov 1, 2003

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is being held this year in Geneva, with a foll... more The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is being held this year in Geneva, with a follow-up conference in Tunisia in 2005. Under the aegis of the United Nations, the summit addresses issues that are of immediate relevance to scholars in the field of communication, including the “new world order” created by global flows of information, the impact of information technology (IT) on the First World-Third World configuration, the information gap and its effects on practices of democratic governance and civil society formations, and numerous other related topics. Given this timely consideration of the role and place of IT in our lives, we have sought to identify the various ways in which gender is implicated in this brave new world, using the criticism and commentary section to highlight gender as a crucial variable in this debate. Too often discussions of such global topics are enveloped by wide-ranging and global policy concerns, where such a focus tends to ignore the real and material effects that policy has on the lives of women and men. Therefore, we want to highlight the ways in which gender is implicated in both information technology processes and in the access to and use of IT. In other words, through a focus on gender, we want to render visible the opportunities and challenges afforded by the development of the Information Society and explore the ways in which the rhetoric of empowerment masks the perpetuation of existing gender hierarchies. The topic generated a lot of interest and elucidated a broad array of experiences from across the globe. Whether assessing women’s access to technology or the ways in which information systems are mobilised to “develop” the South, a unifying theme is that of uneven development. Even those essays that underscore the beneficial aspects of IT include a cautionary note on the blind spots that emerge when the utopic promise of the technology is materialised. Together the essays outline the challenges feminist scholars face as they participate in discussions of democratic governance in Information Society, especially in the realm of universal and equitable access. Moulding the literature on the digital divide to account for women as subjects and objects of IT discourses, Leda Cooks and Kirsten Isgro ask questions about the empowerment rhetoric focused on information and communication technology (ICT), gender and development which emanates from a First World perspective. They suggest that self-conscious reflexivity about the relationship between capital and technology could provoke changes in First World practices and not simply shift the emphasis onto a more informed and inclusive ICT strategy for the developing world. Following this theoretical roadmap is a series of essays that chart the multifar-

Research paper thumbnail of Public Relations and Sustainable Citizenship: Representing the Unrepresented

Research paper thumbnail of Releasing/Translating Agency

Routledge eBooks, Sep 13, 2017

Research paper thumbnail of Media, politics, and the Asianisation of a polarised immigration debate in New Zealand

The Australian Journal of Communication, 1998

Research paper thumbnail of Earth

Routledge eBooks, Aug 31, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Imagining Organizational Communication as Sustainable Citizenship

Management Communication Quarterly, Dec 21, 2014

Organizational communication scholarship has made significant strides in theorizing ethical (e.g.... more Organizational communication scholarship has made significant strides in theorizing ethical (e.g., Seeger & Kuhn, 2011), socially responsible (e.g., May, Cheney, & Roper, 2007; Morsing & Schultz, 2006), environmentally sound (e.g., Cox, 2013), gender-sensitive (e.g., Ashcraft & Mumby, 2004; Buzzanell & Liu, 2005), race-sensitive (e.g., Ashcraft & Allen, 2003; Parker & Grimes, 2009), work–life balanced (Kirby & Buzzanell, 2014), and alternative (e.g., Broadfoot & Munshi, 2007; Dutta & Pal, 2010) ways of organizing and communicating. These strides notwithstanding, there has been very little research on what might constitute sustainable organizing and communicating in a rapidly changing and increasingly contentious world. In this essay, we build on a framework of “sustainable citizenship” (Kurian, Munshi, & Bartlett, 2014) to imagine an architecture of sustainable organizing and communicating that takes a fresh look at the idea of stakeholder engagement. The application of stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984) largely revolves around organizations strategically managing relationships with distinct and discrete publics with mutually exclusive agendas, interests, voices, and rationalities. However, in such formulations, business and corporate goals and values remain the drivers of engagement (Freeman, Harrison, Wicks, Parmar, & De Colle, 2010) as is evident in the spawning projects on business ethics and corporate social responsibility, for example. As Whitman (2008) points out, this influence of business management theory on stakeholder discourse has led to an idea of “corporate citizenship,” which aims at

Research paper thumbnail of Narrating the anxious market: in search of alternatives during global crises

Consumption Markets & Culture

Research paper thumbnail of Postscript A conversation about the future of women, culture and development

Research paper thumbnail of On the Edges of Development

Introduction: From the Edges of Development Kum-Kum Bhavnani, John Foran, Priya Kurian and Debash... more Introduction: From the Edges of Development Kum-Kum Bhavnani, John Foran, Priya Kurian and Debashish Munshi Part 1: Refusing Representations of Development 1. October 17, 1961 Moustafa Bayoumi 2. Ode to "Quasheba": Resistance Rituals Among Higgler Women in Jamaica Hume N. Johnson 3. Plural Economies and the Conditions for Refusal: Gendered Developments in Bangkok Ara Wilson 4. Dancing on the Edge: Women, Culture, and a Passion for Change Kum-Kum Bhavnani and Krista Bywater 5. Resisting Westernity and Refusing Development Molefi Kete Asante Part 2: Emergent Discourses of Development 6. From Roosevelt in Germany to Bush in Iraq: Development's Discourse of Liberation, Democracy, and Free Trade Josefina Saldana 7. Migrants, Genes, and Socio-Scientific Phobias: Charting the Fear of the "Third World" Tag in Discourses of Development in New Zealand Priya Kurian and Debashish Munshi 8. OFW Tales, or Globalization Discourses and Development Ming-Yan Lai 9. Erratic Hopes and Inconsistent Expectations for Mexican Rural Women: A Critique of Economic Thinking on Alternatives to Poverty Magadalena Villarreal 10. From Old to New Political Cultures of Opposition: Radical Social Change in an Era of Globalization John Foran Part 3: Fictions of Development 11. Mama Benz and the Taste of Money: A Critical View of a "Homespun" Rags-to-Riches Story of Post-Independence Africa Lena Khor 12. History, Development, and Transformation in Paule Marshall's The Chosen Place, The Timeless People: A Conversation Among Students of Development Erin Kennedy, Edwin Lopez, Moira O'Neil and Molly Talcott 13. Urduja through the Looking Glass: A Response to Colonial Trauma Tera Maxwell 14. Fictions of (Under)Development: Hunger Artists in the Global Economy Francoise Lionnet. Afterword Susanne Schech

Research paper thumbnail of Releasing/translating agency: A postcolonial disruption of the master’s voice among Liberian market women